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Moral Change

Dynamics, Structure,
and Normativity

Cecilie Eriksen
Moral Change
 Cecilie Eriksen

Moral Change
Dynamics, Structure, and Normativity
Cecilie Eriksen
Utrecht University
Utrecht, The Netherlands

ISBN 978-3-030-61036-4    ISBN 978-3-030-61037-1 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61037-1

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Dedicated to my parents, Bjarne and Lise.
 Preface

Yet to admit the dying of knowledge, as to endure the dying of love, as to

succumb to the death of God and of poetry, may be all that fits one for
rebirth. (Cavell 1999: 449)

This started out as a curiosity quest and ended as a book of betrayal. An

old fascination with Nietzsche’s call to ‘move beyond good and evil’
turned into speculations on what actually does lead to moral changes—
and how, if the values of his own society were rotten and infected with an
unhealthy form of religion, did Nietzsche find the resources to ethically
criticize them?
In the following philosophical investigations of moral change, I attempt
to pay justice to several different aspects of the ethical, which are all essen-
tial, but difficult to balance and hold together in one outlook on life.
These are aspects like change and continuity, human dependency and
human freedom, what is common to humans and different between peo-
ple and peoples, the immanent and the transcending aspect of morality as
well as the ethical as being sui generis (i.e. not being reducible to, e.g. the
social, legal, political, economic and biological) and potentially related to
all other aspects of the weave of human life. The two aspects, which have
haunted me the most in this regard, are what I term ‘moral certainty’ and
‘moral uncertainty’. The relationship between these two phenomena is
not symmetric. Moral certainty is the far more prevailing phenomenon in
human life. This is important to show and pay respect to, because if it was
not human life would wither and disappear. Nonetheless, even though

vii
viii PREFACE

moral certainty is the more prevailing phenomenon, moral uncertainty—

doubts, insecurities, indeterminacies—is from an ethical point of view
equally important to pay justice to. For that reason—that moral certainty
is the more prevailing phenomenon—the best metaphor for understand-
ing the flaws in this book is not, I believe, as a lack of balance between the
two scales in Lady Justitia’s hand. In that image the scale of certainty
should be the heavier. My betrayal is rather that I did not find a way of
writing about moral certainty and uncertainty, which allows them both to
be alive in the text simultaneously. Often, when I describe and call atten-
tion to moral certainty in human life, it leaves me with an unsettling sense
of betraying the openness of morality; that, for instance, I and we could be
acting unjustly, unloving, irresponsible despite adhering to our moral ide-
als. The text turns moralistic, at times even dogmatic. And whenever I
write about moral uncertainty, I feel I betray phenomena like the joy,
cruelty, care, injustice and love which we encounter in our lives. If I were
to doubt or question the suffering of a survivor of the genocide against the
Tutsi or the love my brother has for me, it would not only be indecent, but
‘something holy would be profaned’.
Perhaps a better metaphor for the balance I struggle with in this work
is that of the high-wire artist, who, in order to keep the balance while
moving forward, has to adjust her body from one side to the other, slowly
up and down, small movements in all directions. I know I from time to
time thought of the mad courage and elegant beauty of Philippe Petit
walking between the Twin Towers, while writing. And I occasionally
dreamt of falling, failing, forgetting the unforgettable during the nights. I
found hope, though, in the words of a scruffy poster, I once saw hanging
on the wall of a workshop: “Everything in its right place provides space for
everything”. My job was to keep on trying.
The following people deserve heartfelt thanks for the help they have
given during the many years this book has been underway. I would first of
all like to thank Anne-Marie Søndergaard Christensen for years of produc-
tive co-work, fun and encouragement. I would like to thank Sten
Schaumburg-Müller for crucial help in starting this project, and I would
like to thank Jens Vedsted-Hansen and Ingrid Ravn for friendly guidance
in foggy times. A special thanks is owed to Maria Louw, Rasmus Dyring,
Lotte Meinert, Thomas W. Schwartz, Lone Grøn, Martijn van Beek and
Marie Rask Bjerre Odgaard, all members of, first, the reading group PARG
and then later the research project Ethics after individualism—the best
philosophical–anthropological playgrounds I ever visited! A warm thanks
 PREFACE ix

to Joel Robbins and James Laidlaw at the Department of Social

Anthropology, University of Cambridge, for housing me in spring 2019
and thus giving me an inspiring and beautiful space for finishing the book
manuscript. I also owe Hans Fink, Sylvie Delacroix, Jonathan Lear, Tony
Søndergaard, Bjarke Viskum, Per Andersen, Neil O’Hara and the two
anonymous reviewers thanks for various forms of valuable feedback on the
manuscript. I am most grateful of all for my two girls, Lovis and Lærke,
who bring joy and balance to life, and for the rest of my family, David,
Asger, Iris, Bjarne and Lise. I would never have made it without your love,
support and help. Thank you.

Cambridge, UK Cecilie Eriksen

June 2019

Reference
Cavell, S. 1999. The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Scepticism, Morality
and Tragedy. Oxford University Press.
 Notes from the Author

Parts of the Introduction and Part I originally appeared in “The Dynamics

of Moral Revolutions – Prelude to Future Investigations and Interventions”.
Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 22 (3): 779–792 (2019). Reprinted
with the permission of Springer Nature.
Parts of the chapter ‘Conclusion: Army of metaphors’ originally
appeared in “Winds of Change: The Later Wittgenstein’s Conception of
the Dynamics of Change”. Nordic Wittgenstein Review, 9 (2020).
Reprinted with the permission of NWR, de Gruyter.
Parts of the chapter ‘Conclusion: Contextual ethics’ appear in
“Contextual ethics—taking the lead from Wittgenstein and Løgstrup on
ethical meaning and normativity” in Sats—Special Issue on Contextual
Ethics (forthcoming). Reprinted with the permission of Sats, de Gruyter.
The research in this book was supported by Aarhus University, School
of Business and Social Sciences (case nr. 10765) and the Independent
Research Fund Denmark | Culture and Communication (case nr.
7013-00068B).

xi
 Contents

1 Introduction  1

Part I The Dynamics and Structures of Moral Change  13

2 Angel Makers and the Swedish Child Care Laws of 1902 17

3 Turning the Other Cheek with a Check in the Hand 21

4 The Obedient Danes and the Smoking Law 25

5 A Rebirth of Justice? Indigenous Land Rights in Canada 29

6 Poor Little Sweep! Child Labour in the UK 39

7 From Death Penalty to Church Weddings 47

8 Being Moved Beyond Our Good and Evil: The Crow Case 51

9 Co-work and Compromises: The Birth of the CRC 57

10 Conclusion: Army of Metaphors 65

xiii
xiv CONTENTS

11 Interlude: The Normative Challenges of Moral Change 81

Part II The Normativity of Moral Change  83

12 Moral Conflict 87

13 Moral Uncertainty 97

14 Moral Certainty105

15 Moral Distortion109

16 Moral Revolution123

17 Moral Progress137

18 Conclusion: Contextual Ethics145

Bibliography161

Index175
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

By cosmic rule, as day yields night, so winter summer, war peace,

plenty famine. All things change. (Heraclitus 2003: Fragment 36)

Change is one of the most striking features of morality. More than 2000
years after Heraclitus formulated his thoughts on the fundamental law of
cosmos and human life, his words are echoed in the Manifesto of the
Communist Party: “All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is pro-
faned” (Marx and Engels 1888: 6). This quote captures the nature of
moral change as a two-edged sword. It is a source of both fear and hope.
Change can destroy what we care about and hold sacred, and it can be the
herald of hope for the downfall of ruthless tyrants and empty gods. It can
clear the ground for a better life. It is undoubtedly the latter meaning
Marx and Engels had in mind. They saw the holy of their time as a means
of sedating the poor and working classes, so they did not rise against those
in power to change the basic structures of society, which were harming
them gravely. Marx and Engels were in other words criticising and asking
for an overturn of what their society called good in order to be true to
what is good.
When someone, like Marx and Engels, like Singer, like Yousafzai, like
Thunberg, is criticising the values and ideals of their society, how can that
be done? What leads to the overthrow or gradual change of moral beliefs,

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to 1

Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
C. Eriksen, Moral Change,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61037-1_1
2 C. ERIKSEN

ideals and values? Why, in Scandinavia, for instance, did it cease to be a

father’s moral duty to chastise his children, when they misbehaved? What
made feuds in most of Europe stop being ethically and legally permitted?
On what grounds did the demand for legal equality for homosexuals arise
in parts of the Western world? In other words: What can we learn about
morality by exploring moral changes, and how are we to understand the
dynamics, structure and normativity of moral change? These are the cen-
tral questions of this book, and its aim is to give a philosophical account of
moral change.1
Moral change, however, is not only an intellectually fascinating phe-
nomenon. It also raises moral worries directed at ethical normativity:
When once it was considered natural that some humans were slaves, when
once it was proof of a woman’s innocence in the accusation of being a
witch that she drowned, when thrown into a lake with her hands and legs
bound, and when the colour of a person’s skin has been and continues to
be a reason for how just or unjust that person is treated, how can we then
trust our current moral beliefs and practices? On what grounds can we
allow ourselves to judge and act, if all we have at our disposal are the cri-
teria and measuring rods of such fluid and most likely ethically flawed
practices? To understand the nature of moral change and address moral
worries and sceptical challenges to ethical normativity is important for
several reasons. One reason lies in the importance of hope for human life.
Humans need to believe that it is possible to make a positive difference in
their lives and in the world in order to have the courage and stamina to
act, both individually and collectively (Moody-Adams 2017: 1). It is such
hope and courage to act, and act politically, that the moral and sceptical
worries can threaten to undermine, if they are not addressed. This book is
therefore also an investigation into hope.
It is further important to address the moral worries because democra-
cies, their leaders and their citizens have to strike a balance between, on
the one hand, mastering a respectful political, cultural, moral and religious
pluralism and, on the other hand, mastering legitimate critique of

1
The words ‘ethics’ and ‘morality’ are used synonymously in this work. There is thus
not assumed any first- and second-order relationship between them, as sometimes is the
case, where, for example, ‘ethics’ refers to what is universal and ‘morality’ to a certain
society’s conception of what is morally good and bad (or vice versa), or where ‘ethics’ is
broad consideration over ‘the good life’ and ‘morality’ refers to ‘a system of rules for what
we owe to each other’ (see, e.g. Løgstrup 2020; Williams 2011; Keane 2016a; Fink 2012,
forthcoming).
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

different political, cultural, moral and religious beliefs, traditions and prac-
tices. Another way of expressing this is that a healthy democracy—in order
to both be and survive as a democracy—needs to avoid dogmatic funda-
mentalism (insisting there is only one true morality, ideology and form of
life) and cynical, laissez-faire subjectivism (allowing ‘might to be right’ or
that ‘anything goes’). It is a balance that is hard to find, and which is often
challenged in a globalised world where various forms of transnational and
international politics, trade, migrations, corporations and conflicts take
place. In a democratic society it is also important that we are able to justify,
also often morally, the laws we pass, the institutions we create and some of
the judgements and decisions we make, because our governments and
legal systems are not self-justified or morally guaranteed by a God demand-
ing blind obedience. The legitimacy of such a society’s institutions arises
from being of service to, not only the people, but people. Therefore, it is
important to discuss how we can steer clear of both dogmatic fundamen-
talism and cynical subjectivism.
The belief that it is possible to avoid subjectivism in questions of how
we should live is at odds with what Jaeggi argues is a dominant trend in
philosophy since Rawls and Habermas, namely that the ethical content of
forms of life cannot be criticised or deemed better than other forms of life,
because in modern societies there is an irreducible and incommensurable
ethical pluralism (Jaeggi 2018: ix):

Philosophy has thus withdrawn from the Socratic […] question of how we
[are to] lead our lives [and this question] has been consigned to the domain
of unquestioned preferences or irreducible and unchallengeable identities.
As with taste, there is no quarrelling with forms of life. (Jaeggi 2005: 65)

This book belongs to another, equally influential trend in current philoso-

phy, that has, for example, Nussbaum as one of its prominent voices,
which argues that there is an irreducible pluralism of forms of life, but
these are not, or, as I will argue, at least not fully, incommensurable.
Sometimes we do succeed with ethically and politically fruitful debates,
critiques and quarrels over forms of life. I thus share Eldridge’s intu-
ition that:

it is at least plausible to suppose that there may be a middle way between

dogmatic appeals to sources of value that are independent of human life, on
the one hand, and taking human life to be nothing but a matter of
4 C. ERIKSEN

­ nconstrained competition for purely subjective satisfactions, on the other.

u
(Eldridge 2016: 15)

The investigation undertaken in this book is philosophical, and accord-

ingly, the methods applied are philosophical. The understanding of phi-
losophy underlying it—its theoretical frame—is Wittgensteinian
(Wittgenstein 2009: §§89–133; Kuusela 2008).2 This choice of frame is
made because Wittgenstein’s later work displays great sensitivity to the
fluid and contingent traits of human life and their consequences for nor-
mative and epistemological issues. The conception of normativity found in
his work further manages to avoid both dogmatic foundationalism and
subjectivism and relativism (Stern 2003: 201; Crary 2007b; Kuusela 2008:
95–286). I have also taken my initial methodological lead from
Wittgenstein’s advice, delivered in the form of a straight order: “Don’t
think, but look!” (Wittgenstein 2009: § 66). When we seek philosophical
understanding of a phenomenon, some of Wittgenstein’s methodological
suggestions are to think of how we learned the word for the phenomenon,
to remind ourselves how this word is used in everyday talk, and investigate
and describe the language-games we have for it (Wittgenstein 2009: §§
23, 43, 77, 486).3 As the latter suggestion makes clear, philosophical
investigations are not investigations into ‘mere words’, but into human

2
Philosophical method is not one individual, distinct method, but the use of a large variety
of approaches and tools (see, e.g. Baggini and Fosl 2010; Haug 2017). The choice of specific
methods depends among other things on which problem one is addressing and on one’s
conception of philosophy: what philosophy is and aims for. There is no general agreement in
philosophy as to how ‘philosophy’ should be defined and understood (Daly 2010: 9–13;
Hämäläinen 2016: 7–8). Unsurprisingly, there is also no general agreement amongst scholars
what a ‘Wittgensteinian conception’ of philosophy is. For overviews of parts of the discus-
sion, see, for instance, Bronzo (2012), Pleasants (2008), Crary (2000b) and Christensen
(2003, 2011).
3
To avoid some of the critiques, which have been directed at other thinkers who also have
found it useful to direct their attention towards ‘the ordinary’ and ‘the everyday’ (see, e.g.
Zigon 2014, 2019; Robbins 2016), I must underline that this advice only applies when we
seek to understand a phenomenon familiar from our ordinary lives. If we seek to understand,
for example, what ‘measurement’, ‘particle’ and ‘experiment’ amounts to in quantum phys-
ics, we should not consult our everyday understanding of these words but investigate and
describe the uses of these words in this particular field of physics. Also, if we (as individuals,
as participants in a practice, or as a society), for example, seek to understand a novel situation,
where our old concepts find no—or no good—application, the philosophical task is also not
only descriptive, but can also be critical, creative and inventive. I will return this theme sev-
eral times in the following.
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

forms of life, as language is intertwined with and expresses forms of life:

Our conventions, values, beliefs, practices, institutions and so forth
(Wittgenstein 2009: § 23; Moi 2017: 41).
In this book I look at examples of moral change mainly in connection
with the practice of law, a choice of focus explained in Part I. The point of
doing so is to gain an understanding of the dynamics and structures of
moral changes in Part I, and further to use the narratives of these changes
as a vehicle for philosophically discussing the questions about the norma-
tivity of moral change in Part II. What I have done is to investigate how
legal historians, legal practitioners, social scientists and legal documents
describe and display moral changes, how these changes evolve and what
dynamics have created them. In this manner I have let the practice of law
both remind and teach me how moral changes unfold. Further, I have also
used literature, the works of moral and legal philosophers as well as moral
anthropologists to inform my thinking on the subject.
However, choosing and using legal historical research and other kind of
‘case materials’ in philosophy is never straightforward business—in more
than one sense ‘just look and see’ is not an option (see, e.g. Pitt 2001;
Burian 2001; Widlok 2013; Bolinska and Martin 2019). One reason for
this is that history does not deliver its cases to us in tiny Maggi-cubes,
sharply cut out and ready-made for use. Historical cases have to be con-
structed (Eldridge 2016: 4–5, 28–30). In this construction, choices neces-
sarily have to be made, for instance, as to “what happened; who was
involved; which factors were most salient?” (Bolinska and Martin 2019:
3). A potential problem in this is that “bias can enter at every stage: the
construction, selection, interpretation, and application of case studies cre-
ate the possibility […] that philosophical prejudices will shape them”
(Bolinska and Martin 2019: 3, 6).4 And not only philosophical prejudices
but all other kinds of prejudices too. There are thus ways of using histori-
cal case materials in philosophy that are academically unwarranted, for
instance, to cherry-pick cases that support one’s theory, to ignore coun-
terexamples and to rush into overgeneralisations.
In the choice and construction of cases of moral changes, I have relied
on three main criteria. First, the cases given are chosen based on the

4
Bolinska and Martin divide the challenges to the use of historical cases in philosophy into
two categories—the aforementioned methodological challenges, and what they term ‘meta-
physical challenges’. I address the first here, and return (though indirectly) to the latter in
Part II as part of dealing with what I term ‘sceptical doubts’.
6 C. ERIKSEN

understanding of ethics as something to a large degree quotidian and

familiar. Moral issues and moral uses of words are as well-known to us as
any other everyday form of use (Wittgenstein 2009: § 77; 2006: 28).
They are part of our ordinary practical rationality (Crary 2007b: 301).
Normal, adult humans are thus, ceteris paribus, able to pick out examples
of moral change. For Part I, I have attempted to pick ordinary examples
of moral change, that is, cases which in everyday conversations are referred
to or could be recognised as examples of moral change. Other philoso-
phers such as Appiah (2010), Kitcher (2011), Buchanan and Powell
(2016, 2018), Moody-Adams (2017), Pleasants (2018), Jaeggi (2018)
and Baker (2019) have chosen similar cases in their work as examples of
‘moral progress’ or ‘moral revolutions’, both of which are forms of moral
change. Thus, I have not attempted to avoid the cultural-moral biases,
which lie in this criterion of choice (see Widlok 2013).5 In the following,
I do speak from a certain cultural and historical background—what is
‘ordinary’ and ‘everyday’ for me will not be so for every potential reader,
neither in the present nor in the future. I am, however, not strongly wed-
ded to the examples given. As mentioned, several of the cases chosen are
examples of what are considered moral progress in much current moral
philosophy. But these cases can be and are by others considered as exam-
ples of grave moral decline, like children’s rights, church marriage for
homosexuals and indigenous land rights.6 What I hope is fairly uncontro-
versial across cultures and ideologies is that the cases chosen can be seen as
examples of moral change, no matter what ethical evaluation the change
merits. This, however, is also not guaranteed—what people consider a
moral issue is one of the things that change over time and varies between
people and peoples.
I further believe that other cases could have been chosen displaying
both similar and different dynamics and structures than the ones I have
chosen. For instance, one example encountered several times in my

5
Blindly succumbing to cultural-moral biases entail the possibility of “misrepresentations
of ‘distant’ forms of moral behaviour on the basis of specific norms and values of the observer
(e.g. nationalism, liberalism or Eurocentrism) […] and more fundamental biases, such as
blindness towards ‘morality in action’, the exaggeration of the importance of codified moral-
ity or the overemphasis of moral justifications in discussions of morality” (Widlok 2013: 20).
6
For example, Archard (2015), Ishay (2008), Hunt (2008) and Grahn-Farley (2013) refer
to human rights conventions as moral progress, and this is a fairly common conception of
this legal change. But there are dissenting voices to the idea of human rights as moral prog-
ress, see, for instance, Zigon (2013).
 1 INTRODUCTION 7

research, but not elaborated much on in Part I, is ‘the fire soul’, so often
the hero of movies and biographies—the person those strong ideological
determination and struggle manages to create a moral change, or the ‘first
mover’, who “defy convention and spearhead new behaviours”, but not
necessarily does so out of strong moral or ideological convictions (Bicchieri
2017: xv). Other untreated dynamics are, for example, how technological
and medical innovations play into the creation of moral change. An exam-
ple of the first could be the Danish politicians’ decision to push the agenda
of ‘digital government’ made possible by the recent developments in com-
puter technology. One result of this is the ongoing transmission from
manual and paper-based public administration to digital government
(Motzfeldt and Næsborg-Andersen: 2018). Some legal scholars argue that
this threatens to erode, and thus change, some of the basic moral values
that hereto have been underlying and guiding the administration of the
public sector. The birth control pill’s influence on sexual morality is often
seen as an example of the latter, being an important factor in ‘de-­moralising’
sex before marriage in the Western parts of the world (Van der Burg 2003;
Baker 2019: 115–152). This investigation is thus not covering everything
we can learn about the dynamics and structures of moral change from his-
tory, anthropology, sociology, biology, economy, literature and others—
and it does also not aim to do so, for reasons that will hopefully be clear at
the end of the book, when I sketch the conception of ‘the ethical’ I term
contextual ethics.
The second criterion for the choice of cases is to cover cases ranging
from minor over medium to major and radical moral change. When inves-
tigating moral changes it is natural to become fascinated and focussed on
examples of dramatic civil disobedience or moral revolutions, like Gandhi’s
rebellion, the French Revolution or the abolition of slavery, where whole
societies changed some of their fundamental moral values and legal and
political systems (see, e.g. Baker 2019; Pleasants 2018; Appiah 2010; Lear
2008; Berman 1983). In these cases, the moral changes are obvious and
stand out, and the description of them furthermore often amounts to an
engaging and thought provoking story. Yet, to understand the dynamics
of moral change and moral normativity only from the point of view of
revolutions and radical changes would, I believe, be problematic, as they
do not amount to the most common kind of moral changes. Where cul-
tural devastation and moral revolutions are fairly rare, minor moral
changes, on the other hand, are not. Moral changes on a small scale are a
constant aspect of human lives, and they unfold both on the level of the
8 C. ERIKSEN

individual’s life, in practices, and in whole societies. I have therefore also

chosen cases, which are not ‘moral revolutions’, but still can be argued to
be moral changes on a smaller scale. However, research on change in other
areas, like Kuhn’s work on changes in science (Kuhn 1970) as well as in
moral philosophy, like Lear’s work on cultural devastation (Lear 2008)
and Baker’s on moral revolutions (Baker 2019), show that issues of nor-
mativity—and thus activities such as evaluation, critique, justification and
judging—take on different forms and roles in different degrees of change,
most notably during and after radical changes. In order to discuss the
normativity of moral changes, I have deemed it important to cover the
‘full range’ from minor to radical changes.
When categorising a particular change according to how wide-ranging
it is, the categorisation depends on what one compares the change to and
the perspective from where one looks at the change (from the perspective
of the ant, which I step on and crush, this event is a major change in its
world, for me this change is so tiny that I would say nothing really
changed). It will therefore always be highly debatable how any concrete
change, moral or otherwise, should be categorised in terms of ‘size’ and
‘range’. When it comes to the cases discussed, I do not wish to make any
factual claims about their size and range. What I do hope to have accom-
plished is to present meaningful descriptions of what minor and radical
moral changes can look like.
Thirdly, and lastly, the main part of the examples is drawn from the
practice of law in a broad sense of the term. This I have done as a too nar-
row focus more likely leads to a distorted conception of the phenomena
one seeks to understand (Wittgenstein 2009; Widlok 2013; Bolinska and
Martin 2019). The legal case material I have investigated therefore encom-
passes legal research comparing changes in morally important concepts in
laws, international declarations and conventions, an ancient play on a
moral conflict arising out of a change of law, legal and legislative history
documenting what lead up to the passing of ethically significant new laws,
national laws, social scientific investigations of changes in a people’s moral
values after the passing of new laws, and a lawyer’s speaking notes for
explaining cases, laws and court decisions to her clients and at seminars at
universities.7 On the basis of these materials I have constructed eight nar-
ratives of moral changes in Part I.

7
Obviously, the objection could be raised that to truly avoid a too one-sided diet in my
investigation, I also ought to have investigated, for instance, sociological, psychological,
 1 INTRODUCTION 9

What is done with legal historical research, laws and other ‘case materi-
als’ in this book is inspired by Lear’s philosophical use of anthropological
and historical material in the work Radical Hope. Lear writes: “A philo-
sophical inquiry may rely on historical and anthropological accounts of
how a traditional culture actually came to an end, but ultimately it wants
to know not about actuality but about possibility” (Lear 2008: 7–9). The
eight narratives of moral changes have very different historical depths and
precision. Some are more or less just mentioned and rely on not very
authoritative sources, some are roughly sketched, and still others are
described within the context of a longer historical background and based
on the work of several authoritative historians. None of the narratives are
constructed in a way that aims to satisfy the criteria and methods of, for
example, history, sociology or legal dogmatics. For instance, no critical
source analysis is made. Furthermore, if the historical literature I have read
is silent or imprecise as to when and where a change happened, so is my
narrative.
The main reason for these choices is that the investigation in this book
is philosophical and hence has other aims, methods and criteria of success
than, for example, historical, sociological and legal research (Wittgenstein
2009: §§ 89–133, xii; Kuusela 2008; Hacker 2015). The aim is not to
supply the reader with new, accurate and reliable historical information—
but to supply us with a clear conceptual understanding of moral change
and to address moral worries and sceptical doubts. The nature of the cases
below is best understood if they are viewed as narratives of various moral
changes inspired by and based on legal, historical, and sociological research
as well as on legal texts like conventions, speaking notes and laws. The
stories are vehicles for philosophical thinking by being descriptions of
moral changes. The relevant questions to ask of these narratives are thus
generally not ‘Is this true? Did things really happen this way at this point
in time? Was the dynamic x actually why y changed?’ (even though it is in
some cases). Rather, the questions to ask are ‘Does this narrative make
sense as a story about a conflict which leads to moral change?’ or ‘Is this
story enlightening as to what could be a dynamic leading to moral change?’

neurological, biological and economic, research into various forms of moral changes.
Further, my theoretical fame could have been wider or different and so forth. With a topic as
broad as ‘moral change’ the possibilities of meaningful critique of my choice of focus as well
as theoretical frame are countless. What I present is not the only good or an exhaustive way
of investigating this topic, but hopefully one fruitful way of doing so.
10 C. ERIKSEN

The central concept in this work is that of ‘moral change’. The last
reason for investigating moral change, I want to bring forth here, is that
despite there since the 1980s has been an increasing interest in and aware-
ness of the historicity of morality, then moral change as such is currently
under-theorised (Hämäläinen 2017: 47–48). The main focus in contem-
porary philosophy is on ‘moral progress’ (see, e.g. Nussbaum 2007, 2011;
Rorty 1999, 2007; Posner 1998a, b; Moody-Adams 1999, 2002, 2017;
Singer 2008; Wilson 2010; Appiah 2010; Pleasants 2010, 2018; Roth
2012; Summers 2016; Jamieson 2016; Musschenga and Meynen 2017;
Buchanan and Powell 2016, 2018; Hermann 2019). The topic of moral
change as such, the dynamics creating it and the structures it unfolds after
thus represents a lacuna in the existing moral philosophical research.
The concept of ‘moral change’ will, for reasons also made clear in the
concluding section on contextual ethics, remain a fairly broad term
throughout this book. If one consults a dictionary, ‘change’ means “make
or become different”.8 Change is further characterised by being a timely
phenomenon—it unfolds between a before and an after. But when, and
thus also why, something begins to change is in many cases difficult to
pinpoint exactly and will often be debatable. As a novice to reading his-
torical research, I often found myself being drawn further and further back
in time in my search for an understanding of the dynamics leading to any
event in the present. Trying to understand the passing of the Convention
of the Rights of the Child in the UN in 1989 thus lead me back to laws and
legal conceptions of the child in the early Roman Empire (Vial-Dumas
2014)! When creating a historical narrative there is often an element of
arbitrary choice in the starting point. The narratives in Part I are no excep-
tion to this rule.
What, then, ‘becomes different’ in a moral change? That is up for
heated philosophical debate; a debated entered in Part II. In this book,
‘moral change’ refers to, for instance, a law going from giving an incite-
ment to cause human harm to not doing so. A moral change can also be a
change in how we believe we best take care of something we value (like
good health), where the value stays the same, but we gain new knowledge
of the world, which changes how well we manage to live up to this value.
A moral change can also be a change in what we morally value or condemn
in our society, like the change from valuing ‘obedience’ in the education
of children to putting more stress on ‘an ability to critical thinking’. A

8
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/change (accessed 12.4.2019).
 1 INTRODUCTION 11

moral change can further be a change in our moral framework and ideals,
like when ‘honour’ was abandoned as a core ideal for family life in
Scandinavia. Such row of examples seems, however, to leave it an open
question precisely what it is that changes in what we refer to as ‘a moral
change’. Is it ever morality itself that changes? Or is it only human under-
standing of morality, or the circumstances, which morality is applied to,
which changes? (Raz 1994: 144; Green 2013a: 480; Moody-Adams 2017:
2–3). An important task for contemporary research, and one which is
dealt with throughout this book, is thus to discuss which metaphors and
conceptualisations are apt for understanding morality. With this book my
hope has been that attention to moral changes in the contexts of actual life
combined with philosophical discussions proves a fruitful road to travel
towards an understanding of the both elusive and tangible phenomenon
of moral change.
 PART I

The Dynamics and Structures

of Moral Change

Modern moralities differ enormously from tribal worlds of Leviticus and

Deuteronomy or the heroic societies of the Odyssey and Beowulf. We have
gone from thinking that an insult to familial honour is adequate justification
for killing another, to thinking that would be plain murder; from thinking
slavery is permissible and even natural to holding it a grotesque assault on
human dignity. These are not merely changes in the social facts on which
morality operates, they are changes in social morality itself. (Green 2013a: 480)

What drives moral changes like the legal prohibition of slavery and wom-
en’s right to vote? The importance of an answer to this question lies in its
role in active creations of social and moral change in societies. For instance,
both Bicchieri and Appiah rely on that general knowledge or a theory of
the dynamics of change can help us to create changes in harmful practices,
institutions and traditions, like honour killing, child marriage, genital
mutilation and political corruption (Bicchieri 2017: ix–xi; Appiah 2010:
xvii, 139–172). Further, a wrong or insufficient conceptualization, held
by, for example, scientists, politicians and NGOs and incorporated into
laws and institutions, can lead to misfired inventions, wasted resources and
possibly human harm. If we lack conceptual clarity, we will have trouble
making good decisions (Hopf 2018: 688). In other words, the value of an
adequate understanding of the dynamics and structures of moral changes
lies in its potential to help or hinder us create progress.
The research into the topic of moral change has several lacunas, one of
which is that “We lack a general account of the springs of moral change”
(Green 2013a: 481)—we lack a general understanding of what leads to
14 The Dynamics and Structures of Moral Change

and creates moral changes. There has been both empirical and philosophi-
cal research into the dynamics and structure of moral revolutions (e.g.
Palmer and Schagrin 1978; Appiah 2010; Pleasants 2018; Hermann 2019;
Baker 2019), into how certain individuals or a certain people have changed
their moral outlook (e.g. Robbins 2004, 2007; Lear 2008; Minnameier
2009; Roth 2012), into which metaphors we use to understand moral
changes (e.g. Hämäläinen 2017), and into how social norms, affecting
important moral issues, change and can be changed (e.g. Bicchieri 2017;
Sunstein 2019). However, we still lack an understanding of the dynamics
and structures of moral changes as such, ranging from minor to revolu-
tionary changes. In the following, I will unfold why I consider practices of
law to be a particular suited focus for a philosophical investigation into
moral change.1
The discussion of the nature of the relations between law and ethics has
ancient roots, and has not been settled to this day.2 It therefore seems
prudent to follow Green and Hart in the conclusions that “The single
most important thing to know about the relationship between law and
morality is that there is no single thing to know” (Green 2013b: 1). This
is because “There are many different types of relation between law and
morals and there is nothing which can be profitably singled out for study
as the relation between them” (Hart 1997: 185, my italics). The work in
this book thus rests on the assumption that law and ethics are connected
in various ways. “Law is a normative social practice” (Delacroix 2011:
155), and part of that normativity is of an ethical nature (Delacroix 2011:
147,148; Van Der Burg 2014: 71). Laws and legal institutions institution-
alise moral values and ideals of the society we want to keep, as well as
visions of the society we do not yet have but seek to create (Green
2013a: 494).
Although law can incarnate parts of a society’s moral ideas and ideals,
the two concepts are not synonyms: Everything ‘legal’ is not ‘ethical’, and
vice versa. This leads to what can be called law’s inherent moral risk
(Delacroix 2017). There can be a difference in what the law demands of
us and what morality demands of us, for example, in the form of love,

1
In legal science there is no general agreement on the definition of law (see e.g. Gardner
2011; Del Mar 2011: 1; Marmor 2015; Patterson 2010). I follow Patterson (1990: 980),
Morawetz (2000a) and Eisele (2006) in conceptualizing law as a practice (or, more precisely,
a set of practices, as law is and has been practiced in different ways).
2
Moore (2012) gives an insight into how complex the question and current debates of the
relations between law and morality are in legal philosophy today.
 The Dynamics and Structures of Moral Change 15

justice or respect of family—something Sophocles’ ancient play Antigone

reminds us: Antigone, daughter of Oedipus, is caught in a grim dilemma.
Her brother, Polyneices, has been killed in a battle over the throne of
Thebes. Religion and tradition demand that dead relatives should be bur-
ied by the family, and she feels morally obliged to follow this. Yet the King,
Antigone’s uncle Creon, has decreed that Polyneices’ corpse should be left
on the open plain to rot. Antigone chooses to obey the moral law, break
the King’s law and bury her brother. Afterwards she has to face the angry
king and explain her disobedience, which she does with an eloquent skill
for insult and youth’s undying contempt of power and death:

Creon: […] did you know of the proclamation forbidding this?

Antigone: I knew. How could I not? It was public knowledge.
Creon: And yet you dared to break this law?
Antigone: Yes; for it was not Zeus who made this proclamation to me;
not did Justice who dwells with the gods below lay down these laws for
mankind. Nor did I think that your human proclamation had sufficient
power to override the unwritten, unassailable laws of the gods. They live not
just yesterday and today, but forever, and no-one knows when they first
came to light. I was not going to incur punishment from the gods, not in
fear of the will of any man. I knew I must die—how could I not?—even if
you had not made your proclamation. But if I am to die before my time,
then I call that a gain; for someone who lives in the midst of evils as I do,
how could it not be an advantage to die? So for me to meet this fate is no
pain at all. But if I had allowed the dead son of my mother to remain unbur-
ied, then I would have suffered; as it is, I feel no pain. If I now seem to you
to have acted foolishly, perhaps I am convicted of folly by a fool. (Sophocles
2003: 33–35)

Creon probably did not make this particular law with the intention of
doing good, but in order to get even. Yet even if he had tried to do good,
this would not have been a guarantee of success. The open, transcending
nature of the ethical excludes an exhaustive codification of it, so the
demands of law and ethics will always run the risk of running up against
each other.
Another important difference between the normativity of law and that
of ethics is that we do not get to choose what morality demands of us.
That it is bad to cause suffering is not so because we have agreed upon it
or decided it to be so. But in principle, though not always in practice for
the single individual or group, “Law is different. We do get to choose
16 The Dynamics and Structures of Moral Change

what our law requires of us. […] Law is always subject to deliberate
choice” (Green 2013a: 475). We as a society—or our representatives or
our tyrants—get to choose what is demanded of us legally.
Moral changes can, as mentioned in the introduction, among other
things be changes in what is valued and strived for, in how we conceive our
duties, obligations and commitments, in what we are prepared to label as
wrong and harmdoing and and how we deal with wrong and harmdoing.
A lot of this is reflected in the legal practice of a society because law is one
of the ways in which societies deal with the shifting demands of what life
ethically asks of us. Law and laws can thus be seen as both ethically insuf-
ficient and ethically indispensable (Fink 2007: 55). When humans make
law, they mean business—they do not in general stipulate law about mat-
ters considered unimportant or petty, and among these important con-
cerns are ethical concerns. We are willing to punish ethical wrongdoings
and omissions in more severe ways than when someone breaks the rules of
good table manners or lacks aesthetic sensitivity (Hanfling 2003: 27).
Significant changes in a society’s morality will for that reason often be
reflected in changes of law (Hart 1997: 185; Green 2013a: 479). Much
can therefore be learned about moral change through the history of
changes in laws, legal practices and institutions. Moreover, the changes in
law can often be traced because many societies document law. The oldest
known written source of law is carved in stone, namely the Code of
Hammurabi, which is approximately 4000 years old (Andersen 2011b:
71). Humans declare laws publicly, they carve laws onto stone, write them
down in books, explain the purpose of them in preambles, make the results
of law cases public on official webpages, report about them in newspapers,
announce the laws publicly and write legal and legislative history and all of
this are sources available for a philosopher.
In this part of the book, a philosophical investigation of the structures
and dynamics of moral change is conducted through eight narratives
mainly inspired by the practice of law. The eight stories are “recollections
marshalled for a particular purpose” (Wittgenstein 2009: § 127), in this
case the purpose of eliciting an overview and understanding of how and
why morality can change.
 CHAPTER 2

Angel Makers and the Swedish Child Care

Laws of 1902

Hilda pauses a few minutes outside the door, listening for sounds in the room
behind her. She knows there cannot be any sound to hear, yet she always lingers
and listens, nonetheless. This is the hardest part. The time where it still can be
undone, where she can stop it from happening, the deed, the drowning. This
time the unwanted had been a boy. He was more nourished and bigger than the
other infants had been. She freezes. Perhaps. Perhaps he does have the strengths
to lift the lid even though she had weighed it down with the coal scuttle? Hilda
holds her breath. No. Not a sound. She walks off to take care of the laundry.

By the end of the nineteenth century, the conception of children and how
to treat them was undergoing a significant change in the legal systems of
Europe and other parts of the Western world. As a tiny part of this larger
movement, the Swedish government in 1902 passed laws with the aim of
better protection of criminal, neglected and orphaned children; the bad
conditions of which they had become aware (Grahn-Farley 2013:
151–153). Before 1902, the situation in Sweden was indeed grim:

The social regimes in place during this period with respect to children living
outside the protection of the family unit were few and brutal. An
Änglamakerska (Angel maker) was a woman who was effectively paid to
treat a child so badly and neglectfully that it died. Another form of social
practice for dealing with such children was Sockengång, which meant that a
child without means had to move between different private households,
which took turns in providing for the child. (Grahn-Farley 2013: 150–151)

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18 C. ERIKSEN

According to the 1871 statute Fattigvårdsforördningen (poverty care

ordinance), the government could provide ‘poverty housing’ or place-
ment in private homes for the orphan, where the child had to work in
return for housing and food (Grahn-Farley 2013: 152). Placement of
unsupported children would occur after the child had been auctioned off
to the lowest bidder—that is, the family that requested the least compen-
sation from the state for taking the child in (Grahn-Farley 2013: 153).
This resulted in conditions where many of the children practically lived
like slaves, and in the worst cases were killed. In the latter cases, the foster
parents either intentionally made the children “live in penury and starva-
tion to the point where they finally died.” (Högman 2017) or, more rarely,
killed the child by strangling or drowning.
The practice of mistreating or killing the children in order to collect the
state money for taking care of them was so common not only in Sweden,
but throughout the West that there were names for it. It was referred to as
‘angel-making’ and ‘baby-farming’. Baby-farming was an occupational
practice known in the UK, the USA, New Zealand, Australia, Denmark
and Sweden (Encyclopædia Britannica: 97). “Unwanted children every-
where throughout the West [from ancient times to modern age] were
often disposable, killed as infants or abandoned to institutions or to the
streets. The history of infanticide […] is long and winding […]” (Fass
2013: 4; see also Dübeck 2013: 75–77). In 1871 in the UK, the House of
Commons had appointed a committee to investigate the conditions in
baby-farms in order “to inquire as to the best means of preventing the
destruction of the lives of infants”. They noted: “Improper and insuffi-
cient food […] opiates, drugs, crowded rooms, bad air, want of cleanli-
ness, and wilful neglect are sure to be followed in a few months by
diarrhoea, convulsions and wasting away” (Encyclopædia Britannica: 97).
Even so, at this point of time in the West it was not legal to severely
neglect or kill foster-children. The criminal laws did to some extent—at
least in theory—protect children from grave harm. For instance in the UK
around 1700–1800, children were protected “against severely injurious or
life-threatening acts perpetrated against them by their parents” (Eekelaar
1986: 167). A child, on the other hand, who hit her or his parent, would
often face severe legal punishment—under a Swedish law of 1734, this
punishment could go up to death penalty. The moral values informing
these laws were that good Christian children should honour and obey
their parents. Good Christian parents, on the other hand, had no recipro-
cal obligation to honour their child, as Grahn-Farley dryly points out
 2 ANGEL MAKERS AND THE SWEDISH CHILD CARE LAWS OF 1902 19

(Grahn-Farley 2013: 151). Despite the formal legal protection of chil-

dren’s lives through the criminal law, some angel-makers went undetected
for years. In their legislative work on children in 1902, the Swedish gov-
ernment particularly wanted to stop the practice of angel-makers (Grahn-­
Farley 2013: 153–4).

Unfortunately, the law had the opposite effect and further encouraged the
dreadful practice. Under the 1902 foster care law, the foster home received
a lump sum intended to last until the child reached adulthood. This meant
the profit to the foster home per child was higher the earlier the child died,
which encouraged the angel-makers. (Grahn-Farley 2013: 154)

The most infamous known case of angel-making in Sweden was Hilda

Nilsson, who operated years after the passing of the child care laws.
Between 1915 and 1917 Nilsson drowned eight of her foster children
(Grahn-Farley 2013: 154). She would place the infants in a small tub filled
with water, put a lid and a heavy coal scuttle on top, leave the room for
some hours and return to find the infant dead. She would then burn or
bury the body. Only two of her foster children were allowed to live. Hilda
Nilsson was caught, when a mother wanted to see her son, Gunnar, and
Nilsson would not allow her. The mother became suspicious and alarmed
the foster care board (Fosterbarnsnämnden), who involved the police, and
the case then unravelled (Högman 2017).
It was not only in Sweden that governments around 1900 had begun
taking action in order to protect the lives of orphaned and poor children.
Similar acts and laws were enacted in other places in Europe in order to
turn baby-farming into a practice less harmful for the children: In the UK
‘The Infant Life Protection Act 1897’ and the ‘Children Act 1908’ were
passed. In South Australia the ‘State Children Act of 1895’ and in New
Zealand the ‘Adoption of Children Act 1895’ and the ‘Infant Life
Protection Act 1896’ were passed (Encyclopædia Britannica: 97). In
Sweden, after critique in the early 1930s of how the Swedish government
failed to take good care of orphaned children, who at that point still lived
under harsh and punitive conditions, the child care laws of 1902 were
subsequently changed again (Grahn-Farley 2013: 164). This time with a
somewhat better outcome.
One of the things this piece of legal history on the 1902 child care laws
in Sweden can remind us of, is that humans often choose to change their
practices, when they discover a practice is resting on a mistake and because
20 C. ERIKSEN

of that misses its objective. The Swedish politicians aimed to relieve the
sufferings of children with the 1902 laws, but failed to do so due to their
flawed legal construction, and instead the laws led to increased suffering
and abuse. This moral decline happened, because the laws gave a strong
economic incentive to take up the practice of angel-making. When the
politicians finally faced up to the mistake in the construction of the law, it
was, eventually, changed, and changed for the better.
 CHAPTER 3

Turning the Other Cheek with a Check

in the Hand

It is early spring at a kindergarten playground in Uppsala. The air is thin and

cold. Birds fill the sky with joyful courtship, and tiny flowers parade delicate
colours against the damp brown and grey of the fallen winter. In the sandpit,
a couple of three-year olds move around in their snowsuits, miniature astro-
nauts exploring the world still new to them. At one point they start to inter-
act. Something is being built. Suddenly, screaming rips up the serenity.
There is a fight. Mighty anger is displayed over the ownership of the yellow
shovel. A pedagogue comes over, sits down and calmly asks one of the chil-
dren: ‘So, what’s going on here? Why did you hit her?’ The answer is given
pronto, in a voice quivering with indignation, ‘She hit me first!’.

This is a common scene and conversation between adults and kindergar-

ten children, and it expresses what seems to be a basic human instinct and
sense of justice. If someone hurts you, you are likely to want payback and
will, depending on your age and upbringing, feel justified in doing so.
“When people wrong you, says conventional wisdom, you should use jus-
tified rage to put them in their place, exact a penalty” (Nussbaum 2016:
1). This sense of justice is called the law of retaliation. Institutionalised,
written down versions of it can be found, for instance, in the Bible, the
Koran (Sharia Law) and the Code of Hammurabi (Andersen 2011b: 71;
Anners 1998: 28–30).
For millennia, in large parts of the world, ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth
for a tooth’ was a predominant code in societies for dealing with situa-
tions, when someone was hurt by someone else. The principle was not,

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22 C. ERIKSEN

however, as it is natural to conceive it today, a rule about the relation

between individuals, because in this period the individual was rarely a sub-
ject of law. It was a code for the relation between families (kin) (Anners
1998: 13–16). If one of your kin was damaged or killed, you had the legal
right and a strong moral duty to retaliate and take revenge by damaging a
member of the perpetrator’s kin (Fenger 1971: 65). And so people did,
earning names for themselves such as Thorfinn Skull-splitter.
From time to time, this practice would evolve into regular feuds
between different families, leaving a trail, typically of dead young men,
behind, as vividly described in the Islandic Sagas, which, if published
today, would have been titled 50 Shades of Bloody Red:

In time Eirik’s thralls caused a landslide to crash down upon the farm of
Valthjof at Valthjofsstadir, where upon Valthjof’s kinsman Eyjolf Saur killed
the thralls by Skeidsbrekka above Vatnshorn. For this Eirik killed Eyolf Saur.
He killed Holmgang-Hrafn too at Leikskalar. Gerstein and Odd of Jorvi,
both kinsmen of Eyolf’s, took up his case, and Eirik was driven out of
Haukadal. (Jones 2008: 127–128)

This understanding of justice and moral duty to kin led to never-ending

spirals of violent vengeance, which sometimes destroyed whole families
and devastated villages, and this in times when strong arms and backs were
needed in order to bring food to the table, and where war, starvation and
diseases already claimed the lion’s share of the population. The law of
retaliation, when put into practice on this level and in this manner, was
thus deeply harming to the possibility of not only human flourishing, but
also of sheer human survival—in spite of the fact that the code seems to
express a sense of justice natural to humans. Therefore, a change was
called for.
Moral and religious arguments against the also morally, religiously, and
legally sanctioned law of retaliation and the practice of vengeance were
known long before it ceased to exist in European and Scandinavian legal
systems and as a cultural practice. Most famous among these are probably
the teachings in the New Testament. Here we meet the new radical idea of
‘turning the other cheek’, when someone hurts you. But clearly, neither
the emergence of this idea nor a very politically and culturally influential
and widespread religion preaching it did on its own manage to end the
practice of violent vengeance—that is, the mere knowledge of this
 3 TURNING THE OTHER CHEEK WITH A CHECK IN THE HAND 23

unnatural option of action did not do the transformative trick. Only turn-
ing the other cheek was not recognised as a meaningful solution to the
problem of feuds.
The solution came by adding two other ingredients to the mix: The
first extra ingredient was interpreting the principle of equality implicit in
the practice in a more abstract manner (Anners 1998: 16). In some societ-
ies, ‘an eye for an eye’ was taken to be a principle that required a literal
interpretation (Andersen 2011b: 71). Did you by accident or intentionally
cut off someone’s right hand, the just punishment was that your right
hand had to be cut off too. In other societies, it had been acceptable to
inflict a similar, and not necessarily identical, bodily damage on the other
part (Andersen 2011b: 71). But the new way of understanding the prin-
ciple of equality in relation to feuds was altogether to abandon retaliation
in terms of physical harm and instead introduce the idea of paid damages.
A family could be paid equivalent damages in the form of money, sheep or
other goods, when a family member was damaged or killed by another
family. “This is why the oldest existing records of legal rules in kin-based
societies first of all are catalogues of the size of the compensation which
the offending kin has to pay if it wants to achieve reconciliation” (Anners
1998: 16, my translation).
The other ingredient of the solution to the problem was allowing a
neutral third party to intervene and play a role in this kind of conflicts
between families. Up until this point in history, the family in many ways
was a legally sealed sphere, but now harm was no longer considered a pri-
vate matter between families. It became a matter for the society. The neu-
tral third party could be a chief, a king, a people’s council, or a state
official, depending on the time in history and the form of society (Anners
1998: 13, 17). This third party could act as a legislator, setting up the
compensation system, as a mediator, judge, and law enforcer in case one
of the families was not complying with what had been decided. Thus,
involving a powerful, neutral third party in the feud and getting ‘a dam-
ages check’, was what finally made the turn of the cheek obviously not
easy, but doable in enough instances as to end the feuds and the practice
of physical vengeance as the normal way of reacting to harm in
Scandinavia—except in kindergartens.
In the first instance, this moral change (the change from having a prac-
tice undermining the flourishing of societies, families and individuals to
24 C. ERIKSEN

having one which to a higher degree was protecting the possibility of

flourishing) was initiated by the fact that the old practice of vengeance had
led to the killing and molesting of too many human beings, which caused
not only suffering and grief but also made some families and small societ-
ies face extinction. What made the transformation of the practice possible
was inspiration from a radically different ethical idea (turn the other cheek)
combined with the pragmatic legal idea of paid damages and an effective
institutional setting (i.e. a third, neutral power instance setting up the
compensation rules, judging the damages, capable of holding families
accountable for paying the decided damages, and taking over the punish-
ment of them, if they did not comply). The ‘turning of cheek’ in this story
is thus not the Christian turn of a cheek, which entails to give up the logic
of retaliation altogether.
This narrative reminds us that a practice creating sufferings and threat-
ening to extinguish us is a strong motivational reason for us to change it.
But the story also points to a basic fact of human existence: A solution
which works with and not against any natural inclinations is important in
creating a successful ethical change. The compensation system makes use
of what seems to be a natural sense of justice, because the other part in the
conflict still suffers financially in return for the suffering they create. The
spread of this new legal practice for dealing with harm that humans inflict
on each other was a change with great moral implications, but it is not a
radical moral change in the sense of the new practice being incommensu-
rable with the old one, because having to pay damages still means that a
kind of harm is inflicted on the perpetrator in retaliation for her harm-­
doing—the perpetrator still has to pay for what she did.
 CHAPTER 4

The Obedient Danes and the Smoking Law

The biggest book fair of the year is approaching. At the aspiring University
Press in Aarhus editors work round the clock, each herding their own unruly
band of authors, reviewers, proofreaders, graphic artists and printing houses
forward, making sure no one strays from the agreed upon path of deadlines.
During the weekly editorial meeting, attendants are fiddling with their luke-
warm coffee mugs, many are smoking, and all, one by one, give reports to
the director on how manuscripts fare in the production process. As the
meeting progresses, the room slowly fills with blue smoke, forming thick
layers and lazily drifting in spirals towards the sealing.

Before 2007, it was legal to smoke almost everywhere in Denmark. Danes

knew smoking was harmful to themselves and those in their proximity
(MM/TF 2017: 48), but nonetheless the practice of smoking was deeply
engraved and valued in Danish culture (Andersen 2011a: 8–9, 73)—so
much so that in 2000 the Minister of Health, Carsten Koch, was over-
thrown because he suggested a law regulating smoking in public places!
(MM/TF 2008: 16). For more than a hundred years it had been com-
pletely normal and morally accepted for people to smoke in bars, restau-
rants, workplaces and public transportation. It was as natural as drinking a
cup of coffee. Also teachers, pedagogues, parents and grandparents
smoked in the company of children in homes, schools, and even in child-
care (Ibid.: 20; MM/TF 2017: 61). The Danish people would, according
to sociologist Jørgen Goul Andersen, even have considered it to some

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to 25

Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
C. Eriksen, Moral Change,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61037-1_4
26 C. ERIKSEN

extent ‘un-Danish’ not to smoke almost anywhere and anytime anyone

felt like it. It was, for instance, considered rude and health-zealous, if a
host asked a smoker not to smoke during dinner in the former person’s
own home. Today, however, as people in the most of Europe and Northern
America, Danes do not smoke in any of these places, and also often not
even in their own homes (Ibid.: 48–53). What brought this change around?
On 29 May 2007 the law, which is commonly known as ‘The Smoking
Law’ (Lov om røgfri miljøer), was passed by all parties in the Danish
Parliament, except by one party, who abstained from voting, but only
because they did not find the law restrictive enough.1 The declared aim of
the law is “to spread smoke-free environments in order to prevent harmful
effects of passive smoking and prevent anyone from involuntarily being
subjected to passive smoking” (Act No. 512 of 6 June 2007, Chapter 1,
Section 1, my translation). This aim was sought realised by forbidding
smoking in all public buildings, workplaces, schools, institutions, collec-
tive transportation and ‘serving places’ (ibid., Chapter 1, Section 2). The
law also includes a ban on smoking in private homes, while public servants
are working there, for instance, during elder care (ibid., Chapter 3,
Section 12).
The reason for making the law was an increasing knowledge of the
damaging effects on human health of not only active, but also passive
smoking. Passive smoking was deemed responsible for the death of 2000
people every year in Denmark, which is far more than are killed in total in
traffic and by murder. Passive smoking had also been proven to be respon-
sible for sufferings like cancer, heart diseases, asthma, bronchitis, SIDS
and other diseases, which not least affect children (Astma-Allergi
Forbundet, et al. 2005).2 The politicians’ focus on the harmful effects of
active and passive smoking was part of a larger national as well as
international ‘health trend’, and the Danish State tried to secure and con-
trol the health of its citizens not only through laws directly restricting
smoking, but also by putting appalling pictures and guilt provoking mes-
sages on cigarette packets, by placing extra taxes on sugar and fat, and by
informing citizens of the so-called extra public expenses to health care for
smoking, excessively overweight, and alcohol drinking citizens.

1
Lov nr. 512 of 06/06/2007 (https://www.retsinformation.dk/forms/r0710.
aspx?id=11388), which was later modified by Lov nr. 607 of 18/06/2012 (https://www.
retsinformation.dk/Forms/R0710.aspx?id=142456).
2
https://www.retsinformation.dk/eli/ft/200614L00535.
 4 THE OBEDIENT DANES AND THE SMOKING LAW 27

When the Smoking Law was passed, it was met with massive critique by
many Danes and especially by owners of clubs, cafés and restaurants (MM/
TF 2017: 48). A group of the latter even took the Danish State to court
to fight for the right of guests to smoke in their establishments, and for a
while, some ordinary citizens took to civil disobedience and broke the law
by still smoking in restaurants, workplaces and schools. However, within
less than six months, the vast majority of Danes did not only obey the law,
but they had also changed their views on smoking as well as their smoking
practice. Today, Danes value smoke-free environments far higher than
their freedom to smoke (MM/TF 2008: 5, 27, 46; 2017: 9). A smoker is
now also considered a slightly morally bad person—someone with a lack
of spine, who pollutes the air and other people’s health, and who is respon-
sible for being a burden to the welfare society. Smoking is thus not morally
neutral any longer, like coffee drinking still is. The moral changes dis-
played here are a shift from the smokers not protecting the health of oth-
ers to actually doing so, as well as a people going from valuing personal
freedom and enjoyment highest, to valuing the care of other people’s
health higher; changes, which some Danes consider ‘a cultural revolution’
(Lose 2018). What explains this rapid moral transformation?
The Smoking Law was passed, as earlier mentioned, because the politi-
cians found the increasing scientific knowledge and evidences of a causal
connection between not only active but also passive smoking and damag-
ing consequences to peoples’ health convincing. Here the dynamic behind
the legal change was that those in power took scientific knowledge seri-
ously (and, a cynic might add, they created an opportunity to tax tobacco
even further and save expenses in health care). Yet, knowledge of a
damage-­causing causal chain cannot have been the main dynamics behind
the fast change in the moral values and smoking practice of the Danish
population. This is so because this knowledge had been around for decades
and had not in itself stopped the Danes from smoking. However, this
general knowledge in the population was most likely part of the context,
which enabled the rapid transformation to unfold, though it was not the
triggering factor.
A tricking factor for the change was the passing of the Smoking Law
(MM/TF 2008: 20; Malacinski 2011), but to explain the pace and thor-
oughness of the change, we also have to look at another dynamic, as the
world has seen plenty of laws being passed without eliciting any changes.
The other main explanatory factor still needed in this case is the fact that
28 C. ERIKSEN

Danes are a very law-abiding people. Andersen has documented that

Danes generally obey the law, because it is the law (Andersen 2011a:
8, 57–60).

In concluding, it can be said that Danes’ ability to comply with regulations

is quite remarkable. On the one hand, Danes have quite strong traditions for
opposition to too much central control, and there is probably also a limit
somewhere, where a regulation that is contrary to their norms can be lost on
them, and maybe even destroy their respect for the laws. However, this limit
is far off. The typical reaction is exactly the opposite: Danes will soon come
to respect new rules and assimilate them as part of the general norm: the law
of the land must (by and large) be respected. (Andersen 2011a: 60, my
translation)

Danes’ practice of smoking and the moral evaluation of the practice and its
participants could thus change so rapidly, because the Danes do what the
law asks of them, and not, as it is tempting to assume, because the majority
of Danes’ moral values and view on smoking had changed first. In the
‘smoking law case’ we thus witness law-created moral changes. Not only
do Danes now morally value and thus seek to create ‘smoke-free environ-
ments’, but they also morally condemn smoking and to some extent smok-
ers. Furthermore, the particular human vulnerability, which the politicians
intended to protect by the Smoking Law, is in fact better protected after
the passing of the law than before, because the Danes obey the law. People,
who were previously unwilling passive smokers in places where they often
could not avoid being—like babies in day-care, children in kindergartens
and in schools, people in workplaces and elderly people in nursing homes—
are no longer exposed to smoke, and their health is better protected due
to that. The scientific discovery of links between a certain practice and
damages to human health, the spread of this knowledge, the passing of
laws combined with a very law-abiding people were the dynamics leading
to these moral changes in a practice and a people’s moral outlook.
 CHAPTER 5

A Rebirth of Justice?
Indigenous Land Rights in Canada

She had never appreciated the expression ‘the calm before the storm’. Where
she lived, there was hard wind, when a storm was approaching, making the
rusty roofs on the tool sheds rattle and the lake sing in low growling voices
between the rocks on the shore. Today, however, before the trial is set to
begin, there is a moment of utter silence in the courtroom. She let herself be
filled with its dignified calm, praying it will last through the storm of false-
hoods she and her people are about to face, praying that her voice will be
heard through it.

In the area now known as Canada, humans have been living for thousands
of years. These peoples, today referred to as Indigenous Peoples, were liv-
ing mainly as hunters, gatherers, fishers and farmers. Some of the 1.8 mil-
lion Indigenous Peoples living in Canada today can trace back their history
in the area more than 3000 years, like the Haida and the Gitxsan. They
first interacted with European hunters and traders around 1000 AD, but
sustained contact was not established until the Europeans settled in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.1 For the Indigenous Peoples this
contact proved fatal in many cases, and in all cases harmful to their way
of life.
Yet, in Canada, unlike many other parts of the world getting in touch
with the European colonisers, the land was not conquered (Mandell
1
http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/aboriginal-people/. Accessed
15.7.2017.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to 29

Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
C. Eriksen, Moral Change,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61037-1_5
30 C. ERIKSEN

2015a: 1; Harhoff 1993: 366). The traders, and later settlers, were wel-
comed, and over time different numbered treaties on the use of land were
negotiated between the indigenous population and the reigning monarch
of Canada: ‘the Crown’ in the UK (Mandell and Pinder 2012: 2; Harhoff
1993: 377). This was done according to the Royal Proclamation of 1763,
stating that if aboriginal title has not been dealt with, then the land and its
resources are not available “as a source of revenue” (Mandell 2015b: 2;
see also Harhoff 1993: 372). This means that throughout Canada’s his-
tory and through Canada’s constitution, there is “a bedrock of legal plu-
ralism. […] This law and the Treaties endowed Canada with an Indigenous
foundation based on the rule of law” (Mandell and Pinder 2012: 5–6).
The settlers brought their political, religious and legal systems with
them and established a European-like society in Canada (Harhoff 1993:
366–408). Unfortunately, they also brought ‘the coloniser ideology’ with
them, which considers Indigenous People primitive and without any real
civilisation in terms of law, art, trade, politics, crafts, agriculture, religion
or ownership of land (Mandell 2015a: 1–8). From the late eighteenth
century, but particularly in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centu-
ries, the Canadian government and ‘European Canadians’ tried to delete
what was considered the barbarian indigenous culture in order to bring
civilisation to the savages (Harhoff 1993: 374–375).
The legal system proved a powerful tool in this process. Laws like the
Gradual Civilization Act (1857) and the Indian Act (1876) were passed.
These laws established reservations, where the Native Peoples had to live,
and passed restrictions on eligibility to vote in band elections; they forbid
traditional dress and the practising of dances, decreased hunting and fish-
ing areas, forbid people to visit other groups in their reservation, banned
traditional religious, legal and social practices such as the Potlatch, which
functioned as a form of the ‘Supreme Court’ for the Indigenous Peoples;
and they imposed severe sanctions on people not converting to Christianity,
such as laws preventing non-Christians from testifying or having their
cases heard in court (Mandell 2015a: 3; Mandell and Pinder 2012).
Furthermore, from 1927 to 1951, the native voice of a legal challenge
over land rights had been silenced by the Canadian government, as it was
illegal for an Indigenous nation or person to raise money to take the land
question to court—and for any lawyers to help them doing so (Mandell
2015a: 8). Laws, like the Royal Proclamation of 1763, protecting one’s
land rights are of little use, if one is forbidden by another law to raise a
land question in the courts.
 5 A REBIRTH OF JUSTICE? INDIGENOUS LAND RIGHTS IN CANADA 31

In other words, even though Canada’s past and colonial history is less
bloody than that of other places in the world, and even though it does
hold examples of respectful cooperation over questions of land and
resources between Indigenous Peoples and European-descendant
Canadians, it is still a story unfolding deep harm and injustice and a ‘mas-
ter culture’ living by the rule ‘might is right’ rather than by the rule of law.
In many cases, the government and the provinces in Canada have not
respected the rights of natives nor honoured the law (Harhoff 1993:
378–381). Instead, without permission and concluding treaties, their
practice was to take control over the land and its resources of fishing, min-
ing, farming and lumber production.
The paradigm of colonialism slowly shifted globally during the last part
of the twentieth and the first part of twenty-first centuries. Indigenous
Peoples in Canada, as in other parts of the world, gradually regained some
of the right to be legal subjects with equal rights. Once that shift had
reached the legal system, Native Peoples started going to the courts in
order to claim justice and make governments and the surrounding societ-
ies respect native right to self-government and honour their title to land,
laws, traditions, languages and religions. This also happened in Canada
(Harhoff 1993: 410–411).
However, at the same time the political and legal process leading to
Canada’s independence from the UK in 1982 had begun, and here
Indigenous Peoples were not invited nor allowed to take part in the nego-
tiation process (Mandell and Pinder 2012). The Indigenous Peoples right-
fully feared that one of the reasons for this was that politicians planned
that the partition should entail an annihilation of Indigenous Peoples’ title
to land (Harhoff 1993: 400). For obvious practical, historical and financial
reasons, the idea of ‘aboriginal rights’ was unpopular in many parts of the
Canadian society (Mandell and Pinder 2012: 1–3). In order to be heard
and to avoid the removal of natives’ title to land from the new Canadian
Constitution, legal and political action was taken by several Indigenous
Peoples.
In 1977 the Union of BC Indian Chiefs hired the lawyers Louise
Mandell and Leslie Pinder (Mandell 2015a: 8). Their task was to work
together with the Chiefs for an entrenchment of Native Rights before the
partition of Canada and the UK. Later the task transformed into taking
the land question to court (Mandell and Pinder 2012: 1). Indigenous
Peoples asserted that their sovereign rights and aboriginal title to land
were valid and intact from the time before the Europeans first came to
32 C. ERIKSEN

Canada (Harhoff 1993: 370–373), and therefore they had title to much
more land than the reservations, in which they had been placed by the
government. Natives conceived the relationship with the UK Crown to be
a partnership, and likewise the old numbered treaties and the Canadian
Constitution of 1867 were conceived to express pacts among equal
‘founding peoples’ (Mandell and Pinder 2012: 4).
But even though the Native Peoples of Canada succeeded in bringing
national and international political and media attention to their cause in
the years up to the passing of The Canadian Bill and the final partition in
1982, they were never included in the negotiation process and the consti-
tutional reform (Mandell and Pinder 2012: 8–16). What was managed to
be saved of aboriginal title in the new Canadian Constitution of 1982 was
sections 25 and 35, the latter which “recognizes and affirms the existing
aboriginal rights” (Mandell and Pinder 2012: 16). But, not surprisingly,
when it came to the questions of land rights, the insertion of section 35 in
the Constitution, and especially how it was interpreted afterwards by both
the Canadian courts and government, did not prove to be a happy ending.
The government’s practice of taking land without properly addressing
native title continued and continues even to this day.2 But at this point in
history the Indigenous Peoples are no longer robbed of their legal voice,
and for years, they have openly asked in court rooms, like the Haida:

Where’s the government’s bill of sale? How did the government get title to
the lands and waters, and the fish they claim to be able to destroy, when the
Haida never surrendered our land? (Mandell 2015a: 1)

Over the past 40 years, these questions have been addressed through sev-
eral landmark cases in the Canadian legal system.3 During the court cases
it became apparent that the ‘colonial ideology’ was still alive, not only in
the political system, through the governmental practice of using land
without properly addressing native title, but also in the legal system, in
particular in the way section 35 of the Constitution and the term ‘aborigi-
nal rights’ were interpreted by the courts.

2
See, for instance, Gitxaala Nation v. Canada (2016, FCA 187).
3
Precedent setting court cases have been Calder v. Attorney-General of British Columbia
(1973), Guerin v. The Queen (1984), The Queen v. Sparrow (1990), The Queen v. Van der Peet
(1996) and The Queen v. Powley (2003) (http://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/home/
land-rights.html; accessed 3.8.2016).
 5 A REBIRTH OF JUSTICE? INDIGENOUS LAND RIGHTS IN CANADA 33

When Mandell and Pinder’s firm ran cases for the Union of B.C. Indian
Chiefs, they encountered and had to disprove or refute a large number of
colonial legal doctrines and false claims about Indigenous Peoples’ cul-
ture, legal system and uses of land4: Among these were Indigenous Peoples
being primitive with no real law and political power, and certainly no
effective power and control over their territories, nor had they special laws
for the use of the land (the myth of the juridical vacuum and the colonial
legal principle of terra nullis, a place without owner one is allowed to take
ownership over); it was claimed that the land was unoccupied (the colonial
doctrine of discovery); or if it was occupied, then only so in very small spots,
like a fishing place or a farm; or if not just in small spots, then the land was
only used for ‘a nomadic roaming and passing through’. Likewise it was
claimed that the natives had had no real concept of land ownership before
the encounter with the European settlers; that the natives did not live by
the rule of law, but more by custom, accordingly making it legitimate for
the Crown to extinguish native title and rights and upheave treaties
through legislation (the extinguishment doctrine and the doctrine of par-
liamentary supremacy); that Native Peoples did not act because of institu-
tions, but only because of ‘survival instincts that varied from village to
village’; that if there is some kind of native title today, then prior to this
being proven in court, natives have no right to be consulted or have their
needs and interests in the land accommodated by the government and so
forth (Mandell 2015a, b, 2014, 2012; Mandell and Pinder 2012).
The challenges in disproving and rejecting the above legal, ideological
and factual claims were many, some of them typical for legal disputes, like
establishing the facts of the case and how to interpret central terms, here
‘aboriginal rights’ and ‘existing’ in section 35 of the Constitution. Other
challenges went right to the very heart of this particular dispute. This hap-
pened, for example, when the government and the lower courts could not
accept adaawk (oral history), dirge songs, crests, totem poles, native
accounts of their laws of stewardship, feast system, and use and manage-
ment of their territories through generations as evidence of ancient territo-
rial ownership (Mandell 2015a: 8; Mandell and Pinder 2012: 2–3). Here
is Mandell’s recollection:

4
The cases Delgamuukw v. British Columbia (1997, 3 SCR 1010), Haida Nation v. British
Columbia (Minister of Forests) (2004, SCC73), and Tsilhqot’in v. British Columbia (2014,
SCC 44).
34 C. ERIKSEN

We are about to enter an era where the issues of voice and entitlement to
speak, as well as to be heard, are the dominant metaphors of the political
discourse. Subsequently, this was perhaps best epitomized during the first
lengthy test case on Aboriginal title in British Columbia. Mary Johnson, a
Gitksan-Wet’suwet’en elder, was giving evidence of her adaawk (oral his-
tory), part of which was expressed in a dirge song. Despite the significance
of the song showing ancient territorial ownership, the trial Judge didn’t
want to hear it. ‘I have a tin ear,’ Judge McEachern said. ‘It’s not going to
do any good to sing to me’. Indeed, it didn’t do any good. He ruled that
Aboriginal title in B.C. had been extinguished. (Mandell and Pinder 2012: 3)

An elderly woman singing a traditional song did not make sense to the
judges as an example of proof of land ownership. Perhaps it was even
found ridiculous. It was something to be entirely dismissed as evidence.
The government and courts also refused to recognise that Native Peoples
have a different kind of concept of law and ownership than the settlers,
and that they have another form of farming practice. To have a different
kind is, clearly, not the same as not having a concept of law or land owner-
ship or as not being farmers (Mandell 2012: 6–7).
Another problem was ignorance in the sense of lack of information:
“One challenge was how little was known about Indigenous Peoples and
their legal and political circumstances” (Mandell and Pinder 2012: 11).
This is not surprising given it was a legal and political system that a physi-
cally superior power had attempted to erase for more than a hundred
years. Yet, there was historical, archaeological and anthropological help to
get, sometimes from surprising places—like an old indigenous straw hat
found on a European museum—in order to disprove the false claims and
give insight in the native laws and communities.
Still, the legal battle took many years—the Delgamuukw alone took
14 years, before the Supreme Court of Canada made a final judgement.
Each time the result was a small step forward (Mandell 2014: 5; 2015a: 9;
2015b: 3). The Supreme Court’s decisions over and again sent the same
message to the Native Peoples, to the lower courts and to the political
system; a message supported by the International Community in the form
of the UN, who had condemned Canada’s government’s treatment of
Indigenous Peoples several times. The message was “Canada’s Aboriginal
peoples were here when the Europeans came and were never conquered”
(Mandell 2015b: 5). This translates to: Aboriginal title had never been
extinguished, and it finds expression in the Constitution of 1982 (section
 5 A REBIRTH OF JUSTICE? INDIGENOUS LAND RIGHTS IN CANADA 35

35), aboriginal title confers ownership rights, the title is not confirmed to
small spots, oral history is admissible in native land questions as evidence
on the same footing as historical record (Mandell 2014: 4; 2015a: 9;
2015b: 3). Governments and others seeking to use the land must—if they
wish to follow the law and Supreme Court decisions and uphold the basic
principle of the rule of law—therefore first clear the question of aboriginal
title, and in case of such title, they need to obtain the consent of the title
holders.

Aboriginal title confers ownership rights over the territory […], including
the right to decide how the land will be used, enjoyment, occupancy, pos-
session, economic benefits and the right to proactively use and manage.
(Mandell 2014: 4)

The Supreme Court hereby also “placed reconciliation at the heart of the
constitutional relationship” between Native Peoples and the government
(Mandell 2015a: 9; 2014: 7). The idea is to resolve land questions through
negotiations and consent between equal parties (Mandell 2014: 8). This
can be seen as a way of re-establishing traditional indigenous legal culture
focusing on decisions made by consensus (Harhoff 1993: 395, 397).
These changes represent what Mandell sees as legal paradigm shift.
To make sense of the shift as a paradigm shift in Kuhn’s sense of the
word, we have to look for changes that incarnate a form of incommensu-
rability (e.g. in values, in concepts, in ideals, what counts as fact and real-
ity) between the old and the new paradigm, and I believe we can find
that.5 Before the legal paradigm shift, what in the Canadian courts counted
as, for example, ‘evidence’, ‘legally valid agreements’, ‘ownership’, ‘proof

5
Kuhn (1970) introduces the idea of ‘paradigm shifts’ in the natural sciences. One of the
things that characterises a paradigm shift is that there is ‘incommensurability’ between the
paradigm before and the paradigm after a scientific revolution. What counts as ‘good sci-
ence’, as ‘measuring rod’, as ‘measuring’, as ‘criteria’, as ‘logical’, ‘as self-evidently true’, as
‘an investigation’, as ‘a fact’ and so forth can mean something radically different before and
after a shift of a paradigm. A paradigm shift entails “changes in the standards governing
permissible problems, concepts, and explanations” (Kuhn 1970: 106). How Kuhn under-
stood ‘incommensurability’, and if there is incommensurability between paradigms in such a
strong sense as described here, is hotly debated to this day. The equivalent of this debate in
moral philosophy will be addressed in Part II of the book. By accepting Mandell’s use of the
term ‘paradigm change’, I do not claim that the two legal paradigms—the colonial and the
legal pluralistic—in the case discussed earlier cannot be compared in any meaningful ways. In
this case (at least so far), the legal system has in most respects remained the same.
Another random document with
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minulta kaikki neljä, juuri sinä! Miksi piti sinun juuri sillä hetkellä
ratsastaa rannalla, miksi piti sinun tervehtiä Brentalla soutavia? Sen
teit sinä syöstäksesi minut turmioon. Kuuletko?»

»Kohtalo!» vastasi Ezzelino.

»Kohtaloko», huusi vanha Vicedomini. »Tähdistä lukemista,

loihtimista, salaliittoja ja mestauksia, naisten heittäytymistä torneista
katukiviin ja tuhanten nuolten lävistämien, sotaratsujen selästä
kaatuneiden nuorukaisten surmaa mielettömissä, uhkarohkeissa
taisteluissasi, sitä on hallituksesi ja toimintasi ollut, sinä kirottu
Ezzelino. Veriselle tiellesi johdat meidät kaikki, sinun läheisyydessäsi
muuttuu elämä ja kuolema väkivaltaiseksi ja luonnottomaksi, eikä
kukaan enää heitä henkeään katuvaisena kristittynä
kuolinvuoteellaan.»

»Teet minulle väärin», sanoi Ezzelino. »Minulla ei tosin ole kirkon

kanssa mitään tekemistä, olen sen suhteen välinpitämätön, mutta en
ole milloinkaan estänyt sinua tai vertaisiasi yhteydestä sen kanssa.
Sen kyllä tiedät, muuten et uskaltaisi lähettää kirjeitä pyhälle
paavinistuimelle. Mitä siinä paraikaa hypistelet käsissäsi, piiloitatko
paavin sinettiä? Onko siinä sinun synninpäästösi, vai kirjekö se on?
Anna tänne! Kirje, tosiaankin! Saanko sen lukea? Sinä sallit.
Suosijasi, pyhä isä, kirjoittaa sinulle, että jos sukusi neljänteen ja
viimeiseen poikaasi, munkkiin, saakka sammuisi, vapautetaan tämä
ipse facto munkkilupauksistaan siinä tapauksessa, että hän palaa
maailmaan omasta vapaasta tahdostaan. Viekas kettu, paljonko
kultaa tämä pergamentti on sinulle maksanut?»

»Ilkutko minulle», valitti vanhus itkien. »Saatoinko muuta tehdä

toisen ja kolmannen poikani kuoltua? Ketä varten minä olisin
koonnut ja säästänyt? Madoilleko, vai ehkä sinulle? Tahdotko
ryöstää omaisuuteni? Jollet, niin auta sitten minua, kummi», —
ollessaan vielä pannaan julistamaton, oli Ezzelino nostanut
kasteesta Vicedominin kolmannen pojan, joka sittemmin
taistelukentällä uhrasi henkensä hänen puolestaan — »auta minua
tekemään munkki taas maallikoksi ja saamaan hänet naimisiin,
käske hänen niin tehdä, sinä kaikkivaltias, anna minulle siten
korvaus pojastani, jonka surmasit. Auta minua, jos välität minusta.»

»Se ei ole minun asiani», vastasi tyranni tuntematta pienintäkään

mielenliikutusta. »Hän ratkaiskoon asian itse. ’Vapaaehtoisesti’
sanotaan kirjeessä. Miksi pitäisi hänen jättää alansa, jos hän on
hyvä munkki, kuten uskon. Senkö vuoksi, ettei Vicedominien suku
sammuisi?

»Sinä lasteni murhaaja, kyllä huomaan, mitä tahdot. Toivot

periväsi minut, voidaksesi minun rahoillani käydä järjetöntä sotaasi»,
sähisi vanhus, raivoten vihassaan. Samassa hän huomasi miniänsä,
joka epäröivän munkin edellä kulkien oli tullut näkyviin palvelijoiden
joukosta ja astunut kynnyksen yli. Huolimatta ruumiillisesta
heikkoudestaan riensi vanhus häntä vastaan horjuvin askelin, tarttui
hänen käsiinsä ja tempoi niitä kuin vaatien Dianaa edesvastuuseen
onnettomuudesta, joka oli kohdannut heitä molempia. »Minne olet
jättänyt poikani, Diana», läähätti hän.

»Hän makaa Brentan pohjassa», vastasi nuori nainen surullisena

ja hänen siniset silmänsä tummenivat.

»Missä ovat kolme pojanpoikaani?»

»Brentassa», toisti Diana.

 »Sinustako saan korvausta. Sinut kai saan pitää», nauroi vanhus
kaameasti.

»Jos Kaikkivaltiaan tahto olisi niin ollut», vastasi Diana hitaasti,

»kuljettaisivat joen aallot nyt minua ja omaisesi seisoisivat edessäsi
minun sijastani.»

Diana vaikeni. Sitten valtasi hänet äkkiä kiivas viha. »Jos

läsnäoloni sinua vaivaa, niin kysele Astorrelta. Olin jo kuollut, mutta
hän nosti minut hiuksista haudan syvyydestä takaisin elämään.»

Vanhus huomasi nyt vasta poikansa, munkin, ja hänen

ajatuskykynsä palasi niin nopeasti ja varmasti, että katkera
vaikeroiminen näkyi sitä vaan terästäneen eikä lamauttaneen.

»Todellako. Hänkö pelasti sinut Brentasta. Hm, merkillistä! Herran

tiet ovat sittenkin ihmeelliset.»

Hän tarttui munkin käsivarteen ja olkapäähän, kuin olisi hän

tahtonut saada valtaansa sekä hänen ruumiinsa että sielunsa ja
laahasi hänet mukanaan nojatuolinsa luo, johon hän vaipui puristaen
yhä poikansa käsivartta. Diana seurasi heitä, lankesi polvilleen
istuimen toiselle puolelle käsivarret riipuksissa, mutta kädet ristissä,
ja painoi päänsä tuolin käsinojaan, niin että ainoastaan elottomalta
esineeltä näyttävä vaalea hiussykkyrä jäi näkyviin. Tätä ryhmää
vastapäätä istui Ezzelino nojaten oikealla kädellään kääröllä olevaan
paavin kirjeeseen kuin valtikkaansa ikään.

»Poikani, poikani», marisi vanhus tulvillaan yhtaikaa todellista ja

teennäistä hellyyttä, »ainoa ja viimeinen toivoni, vanhuuteni tuki ja
sauva, ethän toki sinä murtune näihin vapiseviin käsiini.
Ymmärräthän», jatkoi hän jo kuivemmalla ja asiallisemmalla
äänensävyllä, »ett’et voi enää jäädä luostariin, kun asian laita kerta
kaikkiaan on näin. Poikaseni, onhan toki kirkonsääntöjen mukaista,
eikö niin, että luostarin päällikkö sallii munkin erota, jonka isä on
köyhtynyt tai taudin näännyttämä, että poika voisi viljellä
perintötilaansa ja elättää isäänsä. Minulle sinä olet vielä paljon
välttämättömämpi. Kun eivät veljesi eivätkä veljenpoikasi enää ole
elossa, olet sinä tästälähtien kantava sukumme elämänsoihtua. Sinä
olet liekki, jonka minä olen sytyttänyt, ja mitä hyötyä on minulla siitä,
että se luostarikammiossa sammuu ja häviää. Minä voin sinulle
sanoa», — hän oli huomannut lempeissä, ruskeissa silmissä
vilpitöntä myötätuntoa ja munkin kunnioittava käytös näytti lupaavan
nöyrää kuuliaisuutta — »olen sairaampi kuin luuletkaan. Eikö niin,
Isaskar?» Hän kääntyi taakseen laihan olennon puoleen, joka pieni
pullo ja lusikka kädessä oli hiljaa tullut eräästä sivuovesta ja
asettunut vanhuksen tuolin taakse ja nyt nyökäytti myöntävästi
kalpeata päätään. »Aikani on pian lähteä, mutta sanon sinulle,
Astorre, että ell’et täytä toivomustani, kieltäytyy isä-raukkasi
astumasta tuonen purteen ja jää kyyryssä istumaan hämärän
tuville.»

Munkki silitti hellästi vanhuksen kuumeista kättä, mutta sanoi

kuitenkin lujana: »muista munkkilupaustani.»

Ezzelino kääri auki kirjeen.

»Munkkilupaustasi», alkoi vanha Vicedomini mairitella. »Höllä

solmu! Katkaistu kahle! Kun vain liikahdat, niin se putoaa. Pyhä
kirkko, jota sinun tulee kuulla ja kunnioittaa, julistaa ne mitättömiksi
ja olemattomiksi. Tuosta voit lukea.» Hänen kuihtunut sormensa
osoitti paavin sinetillä vahvistettua pergamenttia.
 Munkki lähestyi kunnioittavana hallitsijaa, sai häneltä kirjoituksen
ja luki sen kahden silmäparin tarkkaamana. Hänen päätään pyörrytti
ja hän astui askeleen taaksepäin, kuin olisi hän seisonut tornin
huipulla ja tuntenut kaidepuiden äkkiä siirtyvän.

Ezzelino tuli horjuvan avuksi lyhyesti kysymällä: »Munkki, kenelle

olet lupauksesi tehnyt, itsellesikö vai kirkolle?»

»Molemmille tietysti», huusi vanhus suuttuneena. »Tuo on vain

kirottua viisastelua. Poikaseni, ole varuillasi hänen suhteensa, hän
tahtoo tehdä meidät keppikerjäläisiksi.»

Tuntematta mitään vihaa vannoi Ezzelino tarttuen partaansa: »kun

Vicedomini kuolee, perii hänen poikansa munkki hänet ja perustaa,
siinä tapauksessa että suku sammuu häneen ja hän rakastaa minua
ja synnyinkaupunkiaan, laajan ja suurenmoisen vaivaistalon, josta
kaikki sata kaupunkia» — hän tarkoitti Italian kaupunkeja — »tulevat
meitä kadehtimaan. No, kummi, kun et minua enää voi syyttää
saaliinhimosta, sallinet minun tehdä munkille vielä pari kysymystä.
Suostutko?»

Vanhuksen valtasi nyt sellainen kiukku, että hän sai kouristuksia,

mutta hän ei kuitenkaan päästänyt munkin kättä, johon hän taas oli
tarttunut.

Isaskar kohotti varovasti hänen kalpeille huulilleen

väkevänhajuisella nesteellä täytetyn lusikan. Kituva vanhus jaksoi
tuskin kääntää pois päätään. »Jätä minut rauhaan, sinä olet
voudinkin lääkäri», voihki hän sulkien silmänsä.

Juutalainen katsoi tyranniin kiiltävän mustine, viisaine silmineen,

ikäänkuin pyytäen vanhuksen epäluuloa anteeksi.
 »Tuleeko hän tajuihinsa», kysyi Ezzelino.

»Luultavasti», vastasi juutalainen. »Hän elää vielä ja herää kaiketi

vähäksi aikaa. Pelkään kuitenkin ettei hän enää saa nähdä
auringonlaskua.»

Tyranni käytti hyväkseen tilaisuutta puhuakseen Astorren kanssa,

joka hoiti tainnuksissa olevaa isäänsä.

»Vastaa minulle, munkki», sanoi Ezzelino haroen mielitapaansa

sormillaan tuuheata partaansa, »onko kolme munkkilupaustasi, jotka
vähän yli kymmenen vuotta sitten annoit, — otaksun sinut nyt
kolmenkymmenen ikäiseksi — ollut sinulle suurikin uhraus?»

Astorre loi hallitsijaan puhtaan katseensa ja vastasi empimättä:

»köyhyys ja kuuliaisuus eivät ole olleet mitään uhrauksia. En välitä
omaisuudesta ja minun on helppo totella.» Hän pysähtyi ja punastui.

Tyrannia miellytti tämä miehekäs siveys. »Onko isäsi tyrkytellyt tai

houkutellut sinua rupeamaan munkiksi», kysyi hän johtaen
keskustelun toisaanne.

»Ei ole», sanoi Astorre. »Kuten sukupuustamme näkee, on

meidän suvussamme jo kauan kolmesta tai neljästä pojasta nuorin
aina ruvennut munkiksi, siksikö ehkä, että Vicedomineilla olisi
esirukoilija vaiko perheen omaisuuden ja vallan säilyttämiseksi; olipa
miten hyvänsä, tämä tapa on vanha ja arvossapidetty. Jo nuorena
tiesin kohtaloni, joka ei ollut minulle vastenmielinen. Minua ei ole
pakoitettu munkiksi.»

»Entä kolmas», lisäsi Ezzelino, tarkoittaen kolmatta

munkkilupausta. Astorre ymmärsi hänet ja vastasi punastuen
uudelleen, joskin lievemmin kuin äsken: »se ei ole ollut minulle
helppo, mutta olen senkin voinut täyttää samoin kuin muutkin munkit,
jotka ovat saaneet hyviä neuvoja. Minua opetti pyhä Antonius», lisäsi
hän kunnioittavasti.

*****

»Tämä ansiorikas pyhimys eli muutamia vuosia Paduassa

fransiskaanien parissa kuten, arvoisat ystäväni, tiedätte», selitti
Dante.

»Sitäkö emme tietäisi», sanoi eräs kuulijoista leikillisesti.

»Olemmehan toki osoittaneet kunnioitustamme siellä
luostarinlammikossa uiskentelevalle pyhänjäännökselle, tarkoitan
hänelle, joka muinoin tämän pyhimyksen saarnasta kääntyi, kieltäytyi
liharavinnosta, pysyi lujana päätöksessään ja nyt vielä vanhana,
ankarana vegetarina» — hän nieli lopun pilapuheestaan, Dante kun
rypisti hänelle otsaansa.

*****

»Mitä hän sinulle neuvoi», kysyi Ezzelino.

»Käsittämään munkin tehtävän aivan yksinkertaisesti täsmälliseksi

viraksi, jokseenkin samantapaiseksi kuin on sotapalvelus, jossa
myös vaaditaan kuuliaisia lihaksia ja kieltäymystä, vaikkei kunnon
soturi saa siinä kieltäymystä huomata. Otsani hiessä viljelemään
maata, syömään ja paastoamaan kohtuullisesti, olemaan ripittämättä
nuoria naisia, sekä tyttöjä että aviovaimoja, vaeltamaan Jumalan
kasvojen edessä ja palvelemaan Neitsyt Maariaa yhtä puhtaasti kuin
messukirjassa säädetään.»
 Tyranni hymyili. Sitten ojensi hän siunaten tai varoittaen oikean
kätensä munkkia kohti ja sanoi: »sinua onnellista johtaa tähti.
Nykyinen päiväsi syntyy helposti eilisestä ja vaihtuu huomaamattasi
huomeneksi. Sinun osasi ei ole niinkään vähäinen, harjoitat
laupeuden töitä, joita kunnioitan, vaikka oma tehtäväni onkin toinen.
Jos palaisit maailmaan, jonka lakeja oppisit tuntemaan liian
myöhään, muuttuisi kirkas tähtesi vaivaiseksi virvatuleksi ja
sammuisi sihisten muutaman kerran surkeasti liekehdittyään, taivaan
ilkkuessa sille.

»Paduan hallitsijana puhun sinulle vielä eräästä asiasta. Elämäsi

on ollut kansalleni kohottavaa ja kieltäymystä opettavaa.
Köyhimmällekin olet tuottanut lohdutusta, kun hän on huomannut
ravintosi yhtä niukaksi ja päivätyösi yhtä raskaaksi kuin omansa. Jos
hylkäät kaapusi, ylhäisenä kosit ylhäistä ja nautit täysin siemauksin
sukusi rikkauksista, niin on kuin riistäisit kansalta sen omaisuutta, se
kun on tottunut pitämään sinua vertaisenaan. Se saisi aikaan
tyytymättömyyttä, enkä ihmettelisi, vaikka siten nostaisit vihaa,
tottelemattomuutta ja kapinaakin. Punoutuvathan asiat aina toisiinsa.

»Minä ja Padua emme tule toimeen ilman sinua. Kauneutesi ja

ritarillisuutesi pistää kansan silmään, samoin rohkeutesi, joka on
suurempi tai ainakin jalompi kuin talonpoikaisten veljiesi. Jos kansa
vimmoissaan tahtoo surmata hänet» — hän osoitti Isaskaria —
»siksi että hän koettaa parantaa isääsi, niinkuin oli käydä hänelle
viimeisen ruton aikana, kuka silloin puolustaa häntä, niinkuin sinä
puolustit mieletöntä joukkoa vastaan, kunnes minä ehdin sitä
hillitsemään?»

»Isaskar, koeta sinäkin puolestasi saada munkki vakuutetuksi»,

sanoi Ezzelino ja kääntyi lääkärin puoleen hymyillen julmasti. »Hän
ei saa jättää kaapuaan jo sinunkaan tähtesi.»

»Herra», puhui juutalainen supattaen, »tuo järjetön kohtaus, jonka

rankaisit yhtä oikeudenmukaisesti kuin verisesti, tuskin uudistuu
sinun valtikkasi suojassa, ja mitä minuun tulee, ei hänen
ylhäisyytensä saa minun tähteni jäädä naimattomaksi, sillä minä
uskon suvun jatkuvaisuuden Jumalan korkeimmaksi siunaukseksi.»

Ezzelinoa huvitti juutalaisen harkittu vastaus. »Mihin suuntaan

käyvät sinun omat ajatuksesi, munkki», kysyi hän.

»Ne pysyvät vielä paikoillaan. En toivoisi kuitenkaan isäni enää

heräävän — Jumala antakoon anteeksi syntisen toivomukseni —
ettei minun tarvitsisi olla kova häntä kohtaan. Jospa hän vain jo olisi
saanut pyhän ehtoollisen!» Astorre suuteli kiihkeästi tajuttoman
isänsä kasvoja ja vanhus tuli siitä taas tajuihinsa.

Tointunut vanhus oli huokailevinaan raskaasti, nosti väsyneesti

silmänluomensa ja katseli tuuheiden kulmakarvojensa alta
rukoilevasti munkkia. »Kuinka olet päättänyt, mitä määräät minulle,
rakkaani? Taivaanko vai helvetin?»

»Isä», pyysi Astorre liikutettuna, »päiväsi ovat lopussa ja hetkesi

on lyönyt. Unhota maalliset huolesi ja surusi, ajattele sieluasi. Katso,
pappisi ovat jo koolla täällä — hän tarkoitti kaupungin kirkon pappeja
— ja odottavat saavansa antaa sinulle ehtoollista.»

Niin olikin. Ovi oli hitaasti avautunut viereiseen huoneeseen, josta

loisti heikko, päivällä tuskin huomattava kynttilänvalo. Sieltä kuului
vienoa kuorolaulua ja hiljaista, väräjöivää kellonsoittoa.
 Vanhus tunsi jo vajoavansa Lethen kylmään virtaan ja tarttui
munkkiin kuten pyhä Pietari muinoin Vapahtajaan Genetsaretin
merellä. »Teethän sen minun tähteni», sopersi hän.

»Kun vaan voisin, jospa saisin», huokaili munkki. »Kaikkien pyhien

nimessä, ajattele ijäisyyttä, isä, jätä kaikki maallinen. Hetkesi on
tullut.»

Tämä peitetysti lausuttu kielto sytytti Vicedominin viimeisen

elonkipinän liekkeihin. »Tottelematon, kiittämätön poika», huusi hän
vimmoissaan.

Astorre viittoi papit luoksensa.

»Hitto vieköön», raivosi vanhus, »pysykää minusta kaukana

voiteinenne ja kakkuinanne! Minulla ei ole enää mitään
menettämistä, olen jo tuomittu ja jään siksi taivaan ilojenkin keskellä,
jos vain poikani kevytmielisesti hylkää pyyntöni ja hävittää sukumme
viimeisen idun.»

Kauhistunut munkki, jota moinen julkea kirkon häpäiseminen

syvästi järkytti, näki isänsä olevan auttamattomasti ikuisen
kadotuksen partaalla. Hän oli siitä varmasti vakuutettu — kuten
minäkin hänen sijassaan olisin ollut ja heittäytyi polvilleen kuolevan
isänsä eteen rukoillen kyynelten vieriessä, synkän epätoivon
vallassa: »isä, rukoilen sinua, armahda itseäsi ja minua.»

»Lähteköön vanha kettu omille mailleen», mumisi tyranni, mutta

munkki ei häntä kuullut.

Hän antoi hämmästyneille papeille taas merkin sielumessun

aloittamiseen.
 Silloin kyyristyi vanhus kokoon kuin uppiniskainen lapsi ja pudisteli
harmaahapsista päätään.

»Menköön juonittelija matkoihinsa», sanoi Ezzelino kuuluvammin.

»Isä, isä», nyyhkytti munkki sydän pakahtumaisillaan säälistä.

»Teidän ylhäisyytenne, kristitty veljeni, oletteko valmis

vastaanottamaan Luojanne ja Vapahtajanne», kysyi eräs papeista
epäröiden. Vanhus vaikeni.

»Vastatkaa minulle, pysyttekö lujana uskossa pyhään

Kolminaisuuteen», kysyi pappi jälleen ja tuli kalmankalpeaksi
kuullessaan kuolevan Vicedominin huutavan voimakkaalla äänellä:
»en pysy, enkä usko, kielletty olkoon ja häväisty ja —»

»Vaikene», huusi munkki ja hypähti seisaalleen. »Täytän tahtosi.

Olen valmis mihin tahansa, kunhan et syöksy helvetin tuleen».

Vanhus huokasi, kuin olisi hän suorittanut raskaan työn ja katseli

keventynein mielin, melkeinpä tyytyväisenä ympärilleen. Hän haparoi
Dianan vaaleaa tukkaa, koetti auttaa häntä nousemaan, otti hänen
kätensä, joka ei estellyt, avasi munkin kouristuneen käden ja liitti ne
yhteen.

»Pyhään sakramenttiin kelvolliset», riemuitsi hän ja siunasi parin.

Munkki ei vastustanut ja Diana sulki silmänsä.

»Nyt joutukaa, kunnianarvoisat isät, on luullakseni kiire, ja minä

olen kristillisessä mielentilassa.»

Munkki ja hänen morsiamensa aikoivat vetäytyä pappisjoukon

taakse mutta ehtivät ottaa ainoastaan pari askelta, kun kuoleva
vanhus mumisi: »jääkää, että lohdutusta saaneet silmäni voivat
nähdä teidät yhdistettyinä, kunnes sammuvat.» Astorren ja Dianan
täytyi käsi kädessä jäädä odottamaan itsepintaisen vanhuksen
katseen sammumista.

Hän supatti lyhyen synnintunnustuksen, sai pyhän ehtoollisen ja

erosi elämästä pappien voidellessa hänen jalkopohjiaan ja
huutaessa valtavasti hänen jo kuuroille korvilleen: »erkane, kristitty
sielu». Kuolleilla kasvoilla kuvastui selvästi petoksen onnistumisen
ilo.

Muiden polvistuessa tyranni seurasi istualtaan tyynellä

tarkkaavaisuudella pyhää toimitusta, melkein kuin outoja tapoja
katsellen tai samoin kuin tiedemies tarkastelee kivihautaan kuvattua
muinaisajan kansan uhritoimitusta. Sitten hän nousi paikaltaan, meni
kuolleen luo ja painoi kiinni hänen silmänsä.

Tämän tehtyään tyranni kääntyi Dianan puoleen ja sanoi:

»jalosukuinen neiti, arvelen, että meidän on lähdettävä kotiin. Luulen
vanhempienne jo kaipaavan teitä, vaikka tietävätkin teidän
pelastumisestanne. Sitäpaitsi on yllänne oleva puku liian halpa
sopiakseen teille».

»Olen teille kiitollinen, ruhtinas, ja seuraan teitä,» vastasi Diana

pitäen kättään yhä vielä munkin kädessä. Diana oli tähän saakka
välttänyt tulevan puolisonsa katsetta, mutta nyt hän katsoi munkkia
suoraan silmiin, samalla kuin hänen poskillensa nousi hehkuva
puna, ja sanoi matalalla mutta sointuvalla äänellä: »Herrani ja
valtiaani, emme voineet antaa isämme sielun joutua kadotukseen,
siksi tulin omaksenne. Osoittakaa minulle suurempaa uskollisuutta
kuin luostarille. Veljenne ei rakastanut minua. Suokaa minulle
anteeksi, että puhun näin; sanon yksinkertaisesti totuuden. Olen
teille hyvä ja kuuliainen vaimo, mutta minussa on kaksi ominaisuutta,
joita pyydän kohtelemaan varovasti. Olen kiivas, kun kajotaan
oikeuksiini ja kunniaani ja kiusallisen tarkka siinä, ettei minulle saa
luvata mitään, jota ei täytetä. Lapsenakaan en voinut sellaista
kestää, ainakin kärsin siitä syvästi. En pyydä paljoa, enkä mitään
mahdotonta, mutta mitä minulle kerran luvataan, on täytettävä.
Menetän muuten kaiken luottamukseni, sillä minua loukkaa vääryys
syvemmin kuin naisia tavallisesti. Mutta näin en saa puhua teille,
herrani ja valtiaani, jota tuskin vielä tunnen. Minun tulee vaieta.
Jääkää hyvästi, puolisoni, ja antakaa minun surra veljeänne
yhdeksän päivää». Hän irroitti hitaasti kätensä munkin kädestä ja
katosi tyrannin seurassa.

Papit olivat sillaikaa kantaneet ruumiin palatsin kappeliin, jossa he

asettivat sen paareille ja siunasivat.

Astorre oli jäänyt yksin huoneeseen yllään menetetty

munkkikaapu, jonka alla sykki katuva sydän. Palvelijat, jotka olivat
tarpeeksi kuulleet ja päässeet perille omituisesta tapahtumasta,
lähestyivät häntä arasti ja nöyrästi. Kunnianarvoisen munkin
muuttuminen maallikoksi ja otaksuttu pyhänsolvaus, joka oli
tapahtunut munkkilupausten rikkomisessa, — kirjeen sisällyksestä
he eivät tienneet — oli järkyttänyt ja peloittanut heitä vielä enemmän
kuin isäntien vaihto. Munkki ei voinut surra isäänsä. Kun hän taas oli
päässyt henkiseen tasapainoon, hiipi hänen sydämeensä epäluulo
— mitä sanonkaan — hänet valtasi kauhistava tietoisuus siitä, että
hänen kuoleva isänsä oli väärinkäyttänyt hänen herkkäuskoisuuttaan
ja sääliään. Hän huomasi vanhuksen epätoivon olleen salattua
petosta ja julman herjauksen kuoleman kynnyksellä harkittua
juonittelua. Vastahakoisesti, miltei vihoissaan hän ajatteli naista, joka
oli tullut hänen omakseen. Häntä houkutteli oikullinen,
munkkimainen päähänpisto rakastaa Dianaa ainoastaan
velivainajansa sijaisena, mutta hänen terve järkensä ja rehellinen
mielensä tuomitsivat tämän häpeälliseksi itsepuolustukseksi.

Kun Astorre tiesi omistavansa Dianan, hän ei voinut olla

ihmettelemättä tulevan vaimonsa pontevaa puhetta, ankaraa
totuudenrakkautta ja sitä, miten asiallisesti ja arkailematta hän oli
selvitellyt heidän suhdettaan, paljon karheammin ja todellisemmin
kuin legendan vienot naisolennot. Hän oli kuvitellut naisia
viehkeämmiksi.

Munkki huomasi äkkiä olevansa veljeskunnan puvussa ja ymmärsi

tunteensa ja ajatuksensa hyvin ristiriitaisiksi tuon puvun kanssa. Hän
häpesi kaapuaan, se rupesi häntä vaivaamaan ja hän komensi:
»tuokaa minulle maallinen puku». Toimeliaat palvelijat ympäröivät
hänet, ja hän astui pian heidän piiristään velivainajansa puvussa,
joka soveltui hänelle hyvin, he kun olivat olleet melkein
yhdenkokoisia.

Hänen isänsä narri, Gocciola, heittäytyi samassa hänen

jalkoihinsa osoittaen kunnioitustaan ja anoen eroa toimestaan ja
pyysi samalla lupaa viranvaihtoon, sillä hän oli väsynyt elämään,
hänen hiuksensa olivat harmaantuneet, eikä hänen sopinut lähteä
maailmasta kilisevässä narrinkaavussa. Näin vaikeroiden hän
sieppasi pois heitetyn munkkikaavun, johon palvelijat eivät olleet
uskaltaneet koskea. Mutta hänen kirjavissa aivoissaan tapahtui
yhtäkkiä keikahdus ja hän lisäsi himokkaasti: »ennenkuin sanon
maailmalle ja sen pettymyksille jäähyväiset, tahtoisin kuitenkin
kerran vielä syödä amarelleja. Häät eivät taidakaan olla tästä talosta
kaukana.» Hän nuoli suupieliään harmahtavalla kielellään, polvistui
munkin eteen, pudisteli kulkusiaan ja juoksi tiehensä, laahaten
munkkikaapua perässään.

*****

»Amarelleiksi tai amareiksi kutsutaan padualaisia hääleivoksia»,

selitti Dante, »niissä olevan kitkerän mantelinmaun vuoksi ja samalla
leikillisesti viitaten ensimäisen konjugatsionin verbiin.» Tässä
pysähtyi kertoja hetkeksi ja varjostaen kädellään otsaansa ja
silmiään mietti kertomuksensa jatkoa.

Cangranden eteen astui hänen hovimestarinsa, Burcardo-niminen

elsassilainen, arvokkain askelin, kumartaen syvään ja pyytäen
laajasanaisesti anteeksi, että tuli seuraa häiritsemään tarvitessaan
Cangranden määräystä jossain taloudellisessa asiassa. Italian
ghibelliniläisissä hoveissa eivät saksalaiset siihen aikaan olleet
harvinaisuuksia, päinvastoin heitä etsittiinkin ja pidettiin parempina
kuin kotimaisia miehiä heidän rehellisyytensä ja hovimenojen ja -
tapojen synnynnäisen tajuamisensa vuoksi.

Kun Dante taas nosti päätään, huomasi hän elsassilaisen ja kuuli

hänen puhuvan italiaa, jossa kovat ja pehmeät äänteet lakkaamatta
sekoittuivat, tuottaen hoville huvia mutta loukaten kipeästi runoilijan
herkkää korvaa. Dante katseli kauan kahta nuorukaista, Ascaniota ja
panssaroitua sotilasta. Viimein hänen miettivä katseensa pysähtyi
molempiin naisiin, kertomuksesta elostuneeseen Diana-
ruhtinattareen, jonka marmorinvalkeille poskille oli noussut heikko
puna, ja miellyttävään ja koruttomaan Antiopeen, Cangranden
ystävättäreen. Dante jatkoi:

*****
 Vicedominien palatsin takaa alkoi laaja maa-alue, joka ulottui
kaupungin lujiin, paksuihin muureihin saakka. Tämän ylhäisen suvun
sammuttua on kysymyksessä oleva paikka kokonaan muuttunut.
Tällä maa-alueella oli karjalaitumia, aitauksia, joissa pidettiin hirviä ja
metsäkauriita, kalarikkaita lampia, varjoisaa metsää ja aurinkoisia
viinitarhoja. Eräänä kirkkaana aamuna, seitsemän päivää isänsä
kuoleman jälkeen, istui munkki Astorre seeterin tummassa varjossa,
selkä puunrunkoa vasten ja kengänkärjet paahtavassa
auringonpaisteessa. Munkki-Astorren nimen hän säilytti koko lyhyen
elämänsä ajan padualaisten kesken, vaikkakin oli tullut maallikoksi.
Hän istui tai oikeammin makasi vastapäätä suihkukaivoa, jonka vesi
kumpusi viileänä vuona välinpitämättömän näköisen kivinaamion
suusta. Läheisyydessä oli kivipenkki, mutta munkki oli valinnut
istuimekseen rehevän, pehmeän nurmen.

Hänen siinä miettiessään tai unelmoidessaan hyppäsi kaksi nuorta

miestä, toinen panssaroituna, toinen huolellisesti puettuna, vaikkakin
matkatamineissa, pölyisten hevosten selästä palatsin edustalla
olevalle torille, jonne keskipäivän aurinko jo paistoi. Ratsastajat,
Germano ja Ascanio, olivat voudin suosikkeja ja munkin
lapsuudentovereja, joiden kanssa hän oli opiskellut ja leikkinyt kuin
veli viiteentoista ikävuoteensa eli novisiksi tulemiseensa saakka.
Ezzelino oli lähettänyt nämä molemmat appensa, keisari Fredrikin
luokse.

(Dante pysähtyi, ja kumarsi suuren vainajan muistolle.)

Suoritettuaan tehtävänsä he palasivat Paduaan tuoden mukanaan

tyrannille päivän uutisen, keisarin kansliassa kopioidun jäljennöksen
kristitylle papistolle kirjoitetusta ylimmän sielunpaimenen kirjeestä,
jossa pyhä isä koko maailmalle soimaa nerokasta keisaria mitä
törkeimmästä jumalattomuudesta.

Huolimatta siitä, että heille oli uskottu tärkeitä, ehkäpä

kiireellisiäkin tehtäviä ja heidän huostassaan oli vaarallinen asiakirja,
eivät he voineet sivuuttaa lapsuudentoverinsa kotia, ratsastaessaan
tyrannin palatsille. Lähinnä Paduaa olevassa majatalossa, missä he
nousematta satulasta olivat syöttäneet ja juottaneet hevosiaan, oli
puhelias ravintoloitsija kertonut heille kaupunkia kohdanneesta
suuresta onnettomuudesta ja vielä suuremmasta harmista,
hääaluksen haaksirikosta ja munkkikaavun hylkäämisestä melkein
kaikkia yksityisseikkoja myöten. Astorren ja Dianan kihlauksesta he
eivät olleet kuulleet, sillä siitä ei vielä julkisesti tiedetty.

Te murtumattomat kahleet, jotka yhdistätte lapsuudentovereita!

Astorren ihmeelliset vaiheet eivät antaneet näille kahdelle rauhaa,
ennenkuin he omin silmin saivat nähdä ystävänsä, jonka he nyt taas
olivat saaneet omakseen. Monen vuoden kuluessa he olivat nähneet
munkin ainoastaan sattumalta kadulla, jolloin olivat tervehdykseksi
nyökäyttäneet hänelle päätään, tosin ystävällisesti ja vilpittömän
kunnioittavasti, mutta samalla sentään jonkun verran vieraasti.

Gocciola, joka heidän tullessaan palatsin pihalle istui matalalla

muurilla syöden vehnästä ja heiluttaen jalkojaan, vei heidät
puutarhaan. Kulkiessaan nuorukaisten edellä narri puhui vain omista
asioistaan; ne näyttivät olevan hänelle talon onnetonta kohtaloa
paljon tärkeämmät. Hän kertoi palavasti toivovansa autuaallista
kuolemaa ja nieli samassa loput vehnäsestä, sitä hatarilla
hampaillaan pureskelematta, niin että oli vähällä tukehtua.
Nähdessään hänen hullunkuriset ilmeensä ja kuullessaan hänen
hartaan ikävöimisensä luostariin, purskahti Ascanio niin raikkaaseen
nauruun, että taivas varmaankin olisi siitä kirkastunut, ellei se olisi jo
muutenkin näyttänyt niin iloiselta ja loistavissa väreissään
hekumoivalta.

Ascanio sai vastustamattoman halun tehdä pilaa »Pisarasta»

vapautuakseen hänen rasittavasta seurastaan. »Gocciola-raukka»,
alkoi hän, »luostariin saakka et koskaan pääse, sillä — mitä
suurimpana salaisuutena uskon sen sinulle — tyranni-setäni on
iskenyt sinuun halukkaat silmänsä. Jos tahdot tietää, on hänellä
neljä narria: stoalainen, epikurolainen, platonikko ja skeptikko. Kun
ankara hallitsija on leikkisällä päällä antaa hän heille merkin asettua
salin neljään nurkkaan, jonka kaarevassa katossa taivas kiinto- ja
kiertotähtineen heloittaa. Setäni astuu sitten keskelle huonetta,
taputtaa käsiään ja neljän filosofin täytyy hypiskellen vaihtaa
nurkkaa. Stoalainen päätti toissapäivänä ulisten ja vaikeroiden
päivänsä, siksi että oli yhtäpäätä niellyt monta naulaa makarooneja,
pohjaton kun oli. Setäni on ohimennen ilmoittanut minulle aikovansa
ottaa uuden narrin vainajan paikalle ja pyytävänsä sinua, Gocciola-
parka, munkilta, uudelta isännältäsi perintöverona. Niin on nyt
asianlaita. Ezzelino tavoittelee sinua. Kuka tietää, vaikkapa olisi jo
takanasi.» Tällä Ascanio viittasi siihen, että tyranni saattoi ilmestyä
odottamatta minne tahansa, jonka johdosta padualaiset olivat
alituisessa pelossa ja vavistuksessa. Gocciola kirkaisi, kuin olisi
mahtavan hallitsijan käsi jo laskeutunut hänen olalleen, katseli
ympärilleen ja vaikka näkikin vain oman lyhyen varjonsa, juoksi hän
hampaat kalisten piiloon.

*****

»Pyyhin kertomuksesta Ezzelinon narrit», sanoi Dante

keskeyttäen puheensa ja tehden kädellään liikkeen kuin olisi
kirjoittanut eikä kertonut. »Ascanio valehteli, koska tämä piirre ei sovi
tyranniin. Ei ole yleensä luultavaa, että niin vakava ja pohjaltaan jalo
luonne kuin Ezzelino olisi viitsinyt elättää narreja ja nauttinut heidän
typeristä kujeistaan.» Tämän pistoksen Dante suuntasi selvästi
isännälleen, jonka vaipan liepeellä Gocciola istui ja virnisteli
runoilijalle.

Cangrande ei ollut huomaavinaan viittausta, mutta päätti maksaa

sopivassa tilaisuudessa moninkerroin.

Tyytyväisenä, melkeinpä hilpeänä Dante jatkoi:

*****

Vihdoin he huomasivat maallikoksi muuttuneen munkin, joka,

kuten mainitsin, nojasi pinjan runkoa vasten —

»Seeterin runkoa vasten, Dante», oikaisi tarkkaavaksi käynyt

ruhtinatar.

— nojasi seeterin runkoa vasten ja lämmitteli jalkateriään

auringonpaisteessa. Hän ei huomannut molemmilta puolin lähestyviä
ystäviään, niin kokonaan hän oli vaipunut haaveiluun, olipa se sitten
tyhjää tai hyvinkin sisältörikasta. Vallaton Ascanio kumartui ja taittoi
ruohonkorren, jolla kutkutteli munkin nenää, niin että tämä aivasti
lujasti kolme kertaa. Astorre tarttui ystävällisesti lapsuuden
toveriensa käteen ja veti heidät nurmelle viereensä kummallekin
puolelleen. »No, mitä sanotte siitä», kysyi hän pikemmin arkana kuin
uhmaavana.

»Ensiksi lausun vilpittömän kiitokseni luostarillesi ja sen

esimiehelle», sanoi Ascanio leikillisesti, »että olet säilynyt siellä niin
virkeänä. Olet nuoremman näköinen kuin me kumpikaan. Maallikon
ahdas puku ja sileäksi ajettu leuka nuorentavat sinua luultavasti
myöskin. Sinä olet kaunis mies, sen saat uskoa. Tässä sinä lepäät
jättiläisseeterisi suojassa, ensimäisen ihmisen tavoin, jonka Jumala
oppineitten arvelun mukaan loi kolmenkymmenen ikäiseksi, ja
minä», jatkoi hän viattomannäköisenä, kun huomasi munkin
punastuvan hänen sukkeluudestaan, »olen viimeisenä moittiva
sinua, että olet jättänyt kaapusi, sillä suvun jatkaminen on kaiken
elävän pyrkimys».

»En tehnyt sitä omasta tahdostani enkä vapaaehtoisesti», tunnusti

munkki rehellisesti. »Täytin vastahakoisesti kuolevan isäni viimeisen
pyynnön.»

»Tosiaanko», sanoi Ascanio hymyillen. »Tämän sinä, Astorre, voit

kertoa ainoastaan meille, jotka sinua rakastamme. Muiden mielestä
sinun epäitsenäisyytesi olisi naurettava, kenties halveksittavakin. Ja
koska naurettavasta on puhe, niin pyydän sinua, Astorre,
koettaessasi kehittyä munkista eläväksi ihmiseksi noudattamaan
hyvää makua. Hankalan muutoksen tulee tapahtua asteettain, ja sitä
on kohdeltava suurella varovaisuudella. Ota neuvostani vaarin.
Matkusta esimerkiksi vuodeksi keisarin hoviin, josta alinomaa kulkee
lähettejä Paduaan. Siellä sinä opit moitteettomimman ritarin ja
ennakkoluulottomimman ihmisen seurassa — tarkoitan toisen
Fredrikimme — myös tuntemaan naisia, jotta pääset heitä munkin
tavoin liiaksi jumaloimasta tai halveksimasta. Keisarin henki vallitsee
sekä kaupungissa että hovissa. Täällä Paduassa, missä elämä
setäni aikana on tullut rajuksi, kohtuuttomaksi ja väkivaltaiseksi,
saisit maailmasta väärän kuvan. Todellisemman tarjoo sinulle
Palermo, jossa hallitsee inhimillisin hallitsijoista ja jossa siksi leikki ja
tosi, hyveet ja himot, uskollisuus ja häilyväisyys, vilpitön luottamus ja